Tales of Uncle Iroh's Tea Shop
Azula and the Earth King
"Business has dropped off lately." Uncle Iroh picked up the cups from a table. "I wonder what I could do to drum up business?"
"Offer lap-dances." Azula answered without looking up from her book.
"Have you considered what you might do with your life now that you have recovered?" Uncle Iroh wiped off the table as Azula read on as if taking no notice of him.
"It doesn't involve lap dancing." Azula turned the page of her book. Azula struck Iroh as oddly pleasant and in spite of her past. He had discovered that in spite of her eccentric behavior they actually got along. She had spent a few months at the palace but she decided to spend time in Ba Sing Se with Uncle Iroh and study part time at Ba Sing Se University. He had learned several things about her – she had a keen mind but lousy study habits, never wore dresses and kept to herself. She had a corner of the tea shop where she studied and beat all comers at Pai Sho – even Iroh had fallen victim to her. She had no acumen as a tea shop waitress – serving people was definitely not her strength. "I tried working for you. I can't make tea as we discovered with that one experiment. Our victims – er customers complained that real tea shouldn't turn black."
"Your mother thinks you need direction in life." Iroh puttered around with a tray in his hand. "She wants you to make use of your natural talents."
"Zuko have a part of the Earth Kingdom he want knocked off?" Azula gave a wry smile. Iroh continued puttering and chuckled at his niece. He had long forgiven her for his suffering and imprisonment and she had not mentioned it at all. He did think she added to the atmosphere of his tea ship - her oddly insightful but sad and ironic humor proved one of her endearing qualities. She wrote witty comments on signs in the window that customers would attribute to Iroh and not the quiet Fire Nation girl sitting in the back.
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth – which upon reflection proved a bad idea." Iroh read off the latest witty remark posted in the window. She lacked his peaceful acceptance of the world and raged in her own way against its faults with humor.
"I made the assumption God exists." Azula said blandly.
"Oh I forgot to tell you that Katara and Aang plan a visit to Ba Sing Se this weekend." Iroh bowed as a trio of customers entered the tea shop. "Do try to be civil."
"I always strive to be." Azula placed her book down and picked up her cup of tea. Azula had a fondness for odd books and Iroh noticed she had managed to find the rare and obscure graphic novel version of 'The Origin of Species' a book which for all the controversy it had caused mainly discussed pigeon breeding.
Iroh fussed over his customers while Azula sipped tea and focused on a single thought 'That which does not kill you usually succeeds on the second attempt.' Azula had some reason to fear for her life – she lived in a guest house at the back of the garden of the tea shop. Some people in the city knew she lived there and others wanted her dead for her past crimes. She had conquered Ba Sing Se but found the lack of fulfillment from her accomplishment astonishing. The citizens of Ba Sing Se took the conquest as just 'another one of those things' and simply went about their lives. The rulers at the top had changed and the Dai Lee had taken control but traffic cops guided traffic, ostrich horses placed on the wrong spot got ticketed. City hall took complaints about loud poodle monkeys and burst water mains. She had noticed with some amusement that some people actually took Fire Nation rule as a good thing because in the effort to make the city easier to patrol the Fire Nation had upgraded the street lights and they provided security on public transit which lead to a steep decline in the homicides on mass transit. Azula had heard the classic complaint from Mai 'Victory is Boring' and had come to agree.
"Care to play a game of Pai Sho?" A short Earth Kingdom boy asked Azula. He had freckles and a mop of dark brown hair that looked clean but as if it resisted the efforts of hair dressers. Azula glimpsed her uncle with a wry smile as he turned away. "I have heard of the legendary Fire Nation Pai Sho champion Azula who inhabits this tea shop."
"Lets rock." Azula said in a low menacing voice.
"My name is Karo by the way." He pointed at Azula's left hand and she opened it to reveal a dark blue tile which meant he had the first move. In five minutes Azula had him completely beaten in a game that didn't even challenge her acumen. "Thank you for the game."
"That by you was a game?" Azula swept the tiles from the table. Iroh chuckled quietly as he served the young man some tea and refilled Azula's cup. Azula looked a bit out of her element as she tried to make conversation with the boy - something about it reminded Iroh of watching a three legged dog dance.
"You have become famous as the Pai Sho champion of the tea shop." Karo took his cup of tea and blew on it. "Azula Kai the Pai Sho guy....well I know you are a girl but that screws up the rhyme."
"You talk as if you know me." Azula tried to recognize the face of the young man but she could not place it. Azula had a constellation of oddities in her mental furniture. She found faces hard to understand – it took effort to make sense of a face. She sometimes could recognize a familiar face but in her mind she sometimes had a strange impression that the face wasn't real but a mask – in other cases she would fail to match a face to a person. She possessed synethesia and saw sound as flickers and flashes of light. As a young child she disliked the turtle ducks because they had such a vastly irritating looking sound.
"I have seen you in the library at Ba Sing Se." Karo sipped his tea and blushed slightly. "Have you started taking courses?"
"Part time." Azula placed the tiles on the Pai Sho board. "Let me teach you about Pai Sho. You made a beginner's mistake but you have some promise."
* * *
Azula spent the evening laying in her bed reading. As the one time ruler of Ba Sing Se she knew the most common kinds of complaints involved raccoons and garbage pails. Invading Ba Sing Se had proven easy but the Fire Nation was only one of a long list of unwelcome invaders. With the refugees came every kind of vermin imaginable and the walled city contained them in a food rich and predator poor environment which meant that Ba Sing Se had become an ecosystem of the worst kind. When the Fire Nation took over management of the city they became stewards of the rats, raccoons and other animals not shocked into death by the cold winters. Azula had taken the city for the Fire Nation and yet nothing the Fire Nation did controlled the rats or made a dent in the rabbit or raccoon population.
"What now?" Azula heard the loud hissing and banging of raccoons in the courtyard of the tea shop. She stood up and grabbed the lantern and opened the door of the guest cottage. A fat raccoon rushed passed her and into the room. Fire Nation troops stationed in Ba Sing Se during the occupation knew better than to use fire bending on a raccoon. They could move faster than humans, had a really nasty attitude and tended to congregate around important yet flammable things like houses and warehouses. Azula had not received the benefit from their experience.
"Out." Azula made a slashing gesture and pointed out the door. "You – out!"
The raccoon hissed and bared its teeth as it made a nest out of the red sheets on Azula's bed.
"Serenity now!" Azula yelled and began the gestures to unleash a lightning attack on the animal. Iroh heard a loud bang from his room in the apartment above the tea shop itself and looked out the window.
"I should have held back." Azula stood in her doorway as Iroh approached slowly to investigate. "I had a raccoon in my room."
"You could have lured him out with a piece of fish." Iroh sounded calm although his guest cottage reeked of burned hair, ozone and for some unfathomable reason – fried chicken. He patted Azula on the shoulder and walked back to the tea shop. "I leave you to clean up."
"I had no clue a raccoon would explode." Azula shrugged and looked at the blue smoke that had risen to the ceiling and at a pile of fried guts that had only moments ago hissed at her. She sat down on the doorstep of the guest cottage to collect herself before she began collecting the dead raccoon's scattered internal organs. She had to admit that the carcass held a certain morbid fascination for her but she had no desire to touch it. She had struck it square between the eyes but the lightning had flowed along the spine and grounded out the tail. The intense heat had turned his blood to steam and he exploded as if microwaved.
"Did I come at a bad moment?" Azula heard the voice of Karo. "I smell fried chicken and burning hair – this strikes me as odd."
"I had a raccoon in my room and it exploded." Azula stated the plain truth in a matter of fact way that gave the impression that raccoon explosions were a common event.
"I take it you come from the Fire Nation." Kara shrank back from the gory mess in the room. "I had come to see you and Uncle Iroh said I would find you out here but he said nothing about a dead raccoon."
"He has begun to lose his memory." Azula stared at the mess. "It must have slipped his mind."
"We have to clean it up." Karo stepped back. "Have you come up with a plan?"
"If I burn down the guest house that will solve the problem." Azula began to walk to the tea shop to grab a broom and shovel. "What brought you over."
"I just wanted to talk." Karo watched Azula return. "I didn't expect a bizarre raccoon accident."
"Neither did I." Azula wrapped up the corpse of the deceased animal in the sheets and placed them in the garbage. That left the cooked raccoon shrapnel to deal with. A half hour with a broom and shovel with Karo saying 'eww' or 'gross' every time they had to deal with something unsavory.
"Can I ask you something?" Karo swept up a piece of the tail and then looked at Azula.
"I have never gone out with a guy." Azula sounded a bit irritated and tired. "My mother and uncle keep trying to set me up. I don't do well with guys because they find me weird."
"I will admit I thought we could go for a walk and talk. Instead I get to autopsy dead vermin." Karo laughed.
* * *
"According to this newspaper article a scientist thinks intelligent life exists elsewhere in the Universe." Azula had Katara sitting across from her and eying her suspiciously as if Azula might do something like make a raccoon explode. Momo ran around the tea shop but did not upset patrons tea cups and ended up climbing a house plant. "Doesn't that beg the question – does intelligent life in fact exist here?"
"Your move." Katara spoke with an icy voice.
"I wonder how you leave the planet?" Azula remarked with some degree of interest in the matter and with some intent to irritate Katara even more. Katara and Aang had arrived that morning and Azula had decided to enjoy her own petty amusements. "Do you have any rather unhelpful remarks on the matter."
"I can see an move you could make." Katara disliked Azula but at the same time felt sorry for her. Katara had met wise men and women who had taught her many things about life, about water bending and about survival but she had never known a pure and complete genius until she met Azula. Azula had an incredible intellect and Katara knew that Azula had her beaten at this game before she planted her Water Tribe butt in the chair. Azula made a move without looking away from the paper and won her fourth game.
"If I did what you said I would have lost." Azula wore a self satisfied grin. "You must have used restaurant math to pick your moves. Anyhow where has Aang gone off too?"
"He went to pay his respects to the Earth King." Katara answered blandly.
"Crop circles." Karo took a seat at the table with Azula and Katara. "Evidence for intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. They fly here and draw mysterious patterns in the rice fields of the Earth Kingdom."
"Okay." Katara smiled. "I'm Katara of the Water Tribe."
"Karo of the Earth Kingdom. Azula has been giving me Pai Sho lessons." Karo bowed politely. "Pleased to meet you."
"Crop circles?" Azula scowled. "Drunken college students with rope and a stick make the patterns."
"That would explain the one that reads 'UP YOURS' in fifty meter tall characters. You can see it just outside the city walls." Karo set up the Pai Sho table. "I feel a need to lose to you again."
"Can you bear the assault on your self image?" Azula held out her hands and won the opening move. Katara had to admit that Azula had changed – she still possessed a cruel temperament but somehow it had turned into a dry wit. Sokka had a mastery of physical comedy befitting his easy going nature while Azula had a cutting sarcasm. Katara could sense that Azula took mind altering medication which lessened her delusions. Her fate made her a sympathetic character and while Katara resented her for her sadism something about Azula made her difficult to hate.
Katara picked through the books Azula had piled up on the table. Azula had a taste for science fiction and Katara picked one up that told the tale of a group of explorers who had gone to explore Venus. Karo and Azula played Pai Sho and talked about the various good and bad science fiction authors in the Earth Kingdom and traded in sociological speculation about how people ought to behave in lifts. Katara gave up on the book about exploring Mars and the idea of the multistage rocket didn't seem plausible to her. The graphic novel she found told another story about alien invaders who came to the Earth to enslave the human race – even more implausible.
"You win." Karo announced as Azula sat back. The game had taken over an hour and Katara had reached the point in the graphic novel where a gifted Earth Bender began to rally a resistance to the alien overlords.
"The place has picked up today." Azula winced as Iroh entered the room with a flute and began to play for his customers. He played very well but Azula hated folk music and looked unhappy as a delicate melody filled the tea shop.
"Hello." Aang smiled brightly as he walked into the tea shop. Uncle Iroh bowed deeply and Aang returned the bow as he stood with his glider. He didn't wear his ceremonial yellow Avatar clothes and opted for his work-a-day orange and yellow Air Nomad clothes. Azula could not figure out why but thought it may have to do with aerodynamic drag. Aang patted Katara on the shoulder and sat down.
"Has that pet bear of King Kue gone feral and eaten him yet?" Azula had her tea and picked out a biscuit from a packet Katara and bought for herself.
"Of course not!" Katara scolded Azula and pulled her biscuits back to her side of the table.
"Would make for an interesting news story don't you think?" Azula and Karo resumed a new game of Pai Sho.
"King Kue." Aang cleared his throat and began again. "King Kue wishes to formally invite all of us to enjoy an evening of fine entertainment at the palace of the Earth King."
"Does Azula get to come along?" Katara had discovered that Azula viewed the table as hers with occasional guests and anything like biscuits or a deck of cards became hers by extension.
"As does Uncle Iroh." Aang grinned brightly. "He expects us this evening."
"I will respectfully decline." Azula made a move and Karo cringed. "I have a premonition of my death at the hands of a bear enraged by overly spicy Komodo chicken."
"Surely the mighty Azula doesn't fear death." Katara giggled sarcastically.
"Not at all. I fear my beautiful copse might get mangled by a large omnivorous mammal." Azula waited for Karo to puzzle his way out of her trap.
"Your friend can come too." Aang added. "And you will have me to protect you."
"Uh huh." Azula beat Karo in another game of Pai Sho and he bowed politely. "You guys have big plans but I will spend my evening doing the books for the tea shop."
* * *
"You will spend your evening in this room playing at accountant?" Katara stood at the door of Azula's room as she lay on her bed with an abacus and a series of papers scattered in some pattern.
"My uncle makes great tea but as an accountant he proves abominable. I fear if I let him do the books we might end up owing lots of gold to the class of people who break your kneecaps when you past due. And no one can do accounting or anything involving numbers in an eating establishment like the tea shop!" Azula answered brusquely. "Restaurants have a weird effect on the properties of numbers that turn them from hard and fast quantities into subjective debatable things."
"What do you mean?" Katara had a look on her face as if she thought Azula had gone off again.
"Say you invite four people to dine with you at the tea shop. Maybe three show up, or five. Maybe someone has something come up at the last minute and can't show up or a friend of a friend gets an invitation." Azula poked at the abacus. "Then you get the bill and the 'debate' ensues. Who owes what? What idiot forgot to bring money? who pleads plausible deniability because they could not have ordered the expensive fish dish because they have an allergy to fish?"
"Okay...I'll take your word for it." Katara had her arms crossed and she wore her plain blue water tribe clothes. She had decided to try to convince or coax Azula out of her shell but she had not expected to hear such a twisted theory. "You have a chance to redeem yourself before the Earth King."
"That dolt?" Azula huffed. "I conquered this city and sat on the Earth Kingdom throne and discovered the guy didn't actually do anything of importance. The Earth Kingdom does pretty much what it wants to do and ruling it amounts to the political equivalent of nailing honey to a wall – King Kue is that nail."
"Your mother worries about you." Katara gave Azula a solemn stare. "You still dress like you did as 'Princess Azula' and read books in your room. The war ended almost two years ago and you haven't made a future for yourself."
"Neither to change, nor falter nor repent." Azula placed her work down gently and sat on the edge of the bed. "This is to be good, great and joyous, beautiful and free."
"Uncle Iroh!" Katara felt a start as he walked into the room.
"I know my niece well – she always does the books at this time of the month." Uncle Iroh wore an apron with stains on it. "I came to tell you that Aang wants to leave shortly. Will you be going Azula?"
"No." Azula said. "I have the books to do."
"Such things can wait." Iroh sat down next to Azula. Iroh had learned one did not convince Azula of anything involving social occasions but instead appealed to her sense of duty and her dedication to anything related to the welfare of the Fire Nation, its honor and her patriotism. "You could serve the Fire Nation by helping to build bridges between the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation."
"I will go." Azula sat and looked at Katara who felt utter disbelief. Katara thought she could reach Azula through persuasion and a show of kind concern. She had never come to know Azula well and failed to understand the Princess lived in a world where anyone who showed you kindness and empathy had some kind of an angle and wished to gain something. In Azula's world the idea that someone could care for her existed as kind of mental fossil along with memories of monsters under the bed.
"How did you do that?" Katara and Iroh walked back to the tea shop to leave Azula a few minutes to prepare.
"Azula has a method to her madness." Uncle Iroh bent down to examine flowers growing in the courtyard. He chuckled softly."I have come to know that she still finds enjoyment in serving the Fire Nation. The trick comes from finding her ways to serve that don't involve pillaging."
* * *
"You look fine." Katara assured Azula as they rode over the city in the late evening sunshine. Azula had chosen to wear her formal 'Fire Nation' robes which gave her a regal but overdressed look and she kept checking her clothes. Azula had never ridden Appa before and a six legged flying mammal made about as much sense as anything in the world and she decided that given the choice between air sickness and finding Katara irritating she would find Katara irritating.
"I have a bad feeling that I will end up imprisoned in a block of ice if I do anything inappropriate." Azula felt Appa begin to descend into the palace courtyard. The palace have never made any sense to Azula – it had a squared look that better suited to a factory. Azula could see someone had decided to stucco the large building something resembling a dark beige and saw scaffolding covering one side where contractors did their work. The inside of the palace had vast cavernous rooms and no windows – this meant no daylight or ventilation. She had become familiar with how bad bears could smell and that Kyoshi Warriors had the stupidest looking uniforms in all of the world. Her uniform had never fit and she spent her days in Ba Sing Se with a wedgie. She had spent some time in the palace during her conquest of Ba Sing Se and wondered if they had built it to a plan or knew how to use a level or a plumb line. Any round object that found its way onto the floor ended up rolling off to some obscure end of a lopsided room. The palace covered such a huge area she openly had wondered to Mai if they might find nomads migrating across the grounds and if the nomads proved friendly, would she have to endure some kind of bad ethnic food.
Appa landed softly in front of the huge front entrance and Azula could see the symbol of the Earth Kingdom – now at peace – standing on the wall. Aang jumped off Appa who growled pleasantly. Azula jumped out of the saddle and onto the courtyard as did did Katara. Katara helped Uncle Iroh out of the saddle and they stood in front of the great stairs of the Earth Kingdom palace staring at a large roll of building paper and rolls of the wire mesh used to make stucco adhere to wall.
"Come on!" Aang waved everyone forward.
"I have a stomach ache." Azula muttered.
"Don't do anything stupid." Katara walked along with Uncle Iroh up the large shallow stairs.
"Define stupid?" Azula had her hands clasped behind her back. "I kicked this guy to the curb and he has a large bear as a pet. Now I find myself attending a dinner with the Avatar, the same Earth King, you and my uncle. You will advise me on what 'not stupid' actions I can choose?"
"Ow!" Katara bumped into Azula who had paused to take in the huge doors that provided the main entrance to the Earth Kingdom. "Would you warn me?"
"This place looks like the sort of massive edifice built to house the powerful people who control the lives and destinies of millions of people." Azula studied the dark wood and intricate carvings of the doors. She knew it housed figureheads not powerful men. In her stay at the palace she had concluded whoever designed palaces either had awful taste or they did it in late afternoon committee meetings after the tea had worn off and everyone wanted to get the meeting over with and go home. The Fire Nation palace offered a different kind of ugliness over the Earth Kingdom palace and had its share of overdone oriental baroque elements but Azula liked it because it had a familiar well worn ugliness. She concluded palaces and the people who dwelt in them were compensating for something. "Ba Sing Se has great art, literature, engineering, ancient culture and like most of the people within these walls I had no idea how any of it actually worked. I still don't know what the Earth King does or why they have two. I conquered Ba Sing Se but then had nothing to do. I concluded the Earth King didn't do much and any decisions made came from bureaucrats or a committee of eunuchs – perhaps the King provided some kind of historical continuity which for some reason matters to people."
"Should we knock?" Aang held his glider and approached the door.
"You could but the door knockers are five meters above your head." Azula pointed to two dinner plate sized brass rings. "If you made it easy for the public to visit then they would visit and constantly interrupt you at private moments."
"How does this work?" Katara looked back at Azula.
"Good things come to those who wait." Aang gave a pleasant smile.
"So does death." Azula crossed her arms. "We have arrived early if I know my Earth Kingdom palace schedule. The doors have two guards – both earth benders who open them for visitors since they weigh far too much for a mere human to move. I discovered when I got locked out of the palace – they take a break for fifteen minutes at quarter to eight in the evening."
"Didn't you change this?" Katara tapped her right foot. "I mean you don't put up with insubordination or slackers."
"Even an evil Princess has to take into account practical problems." Azula carefully glanced around. "As I said no mere human could open the doors. You need to know how to earth bend. If I sent the door guards to prison or rid myself of the bloody fools in some unspeakable way - I would have no one to open the doors."
"I can't imagine that stopping you if you fell into a rage." Katara waited impatiently while Uncle Iroh examined the small planters set off on the side of the large regal looking doors.
"Did I mention they had a union?" Azula began to count off the large stone tiles that formed the floor of the great entrance way. Azula began to count off from the nose of the last stair to the door and stopped. "I did figure out a way around this."
"Did you take the medication?" Katara asked grimly while Iroh and Aang stood by.
"The Earth Kingdom built the palace so that no one could break in through the front doors and assassinate the king or steal the bear." Azula bent down and tapped the stone not taking any time to explain herself as everyone watched in uncomfortable bewilderment. "A fool proof system – it requires two earth benders to open the doors – a sturdy defense to be true. As with any fool proof system they fail to take into account the ingenuity of a determined fool.."
"Can you get on with it? Whatever this is?" Katara worked hard not to sound annoyed. Azula had once spoken in short commands and threats now talked at length about nothing of much importance. In Katara's practical mind the threats at least made sense.
"Okay." Azula stomped her foot hard down on the stone which measured about a meter on a side and with a click it opened up on a hinge revealing a well lit passage below. Azula motioned everyone down a set of stone steps into a hallway below. "When they built the palace they wanted the proper security in place to protect the king but they realized they needed an escape route in the event the guards went on strike, they had to escape a rabid bear or the building caught fire. They carved this passageway so that they could evacuate the building if they couldn't order the doors."
"Won't we seem rude?" Katara heard a click as the stone slab slid back in place. The long hall had the same hideous green lighting as the rest of the underground passages in the Earth Kingdom.
"Uh...perhaps some kind of protocol exists for this." Azula shrugged as if the very idea of rude behavior came as an exotic concept to her. She pulled on a small brass ring attached to a thick chain and another thick tan limestone tile opened down on hinges and they emerged to find themselves in one of the woman's lavatories which had no one about.
* * *
"We have not caused any offense." Katara sounded relieved as she whispered to Azula and they both sat down at the low flat dining table. King Kue was in high spirits and he gently directed servants to deliver the repast and to tend to his bear.
"I welcome you all." King Kue stood up and held a glass of tea in his hand. He had picked elaborate green robes for the occasion and for some odd reason his bear whose name no one could recall wore a green bow, a shirt and a green fez. He bowed in turn as he delivered his greetings."I welcome Avatar Aang who defeated the evil Fire Lord. The mighty and brave Katara who defeated the Fire Lord's daughter and my good friend Uncle Iroh who won back the city of Ba Sing Se for the Earth Kingdom. And well....."
"Princess Azula of the Fire Nation." Azula could sense Katara readying her hand to slap her. "The one Katara beat – perhaps I should leave now."
"And the Fire Nation Princess beautiful and brave......and what have you been doing with your time then?" The King bowed to her and awaited an answer. Katara coughed uncomfortably while Aang and Uncle Iroh shuffled uncomfortably and looked at each other.
"I went nuts." Azula sat with some calm and grace. "Not the quiet sort of insanity of someone who decides that getting out of bed just isn't worth the effort and the world is tinged with boredom. Not the quiet desperation of the person who obliterates their world with booze or worse. Not the absolute certainty of the misguided fool who sits on a mountain awaiting doomsday. I went bonkers and tried to kill my brother, Katara, and anything that moved. They threw me away into one of those asylums they place on isolated, out of reach places so I could recover my wits. I spent a year in a small room with shackles around my wrists so I wouldn't kill anyone."
"Oh my goodness." The Earth King seemed a bit taken aback by that. Katara had no ability to really judge if any real offense had occurred. "I hope you have begun to recover."
"I don't know." Azula spoke with some uncertainty. She had the same confused look of someone trying to solve quadratic equations with Roman Numerals.
"Uh...I have her visiting me and she has proven a charming guest." Uncle Iroh bowed politely and apologetically hoping his charm could cover up the lack of charm that came as a natural talent to his niece.
"May I ask how you managed to defeat Long Feng with so few numbers?" King Kue had the look and fashion sense of a librarian but he had a keen mind. Azula looked at the small glasses on his face and then looked at the bear who sat at the end of the table and had an equally strange outfit that reminded Azula of something worn in a masonic lodge if they included bears among their members.
"May we talk about something else." Aang bowed politely. "We do not wish to bring up unpleasant memories at such a nice evening."
"Do you play games?" Azula settled down but still expected to deflect a blow from Katara. 'How humiliating has my life become,' Azula thought as she pieced things together 'that the ice princess thinks she has to control me.'
"I must admit not." King Kue leaned over the table.
"War consists of a game of sorts with lots of lying, of killing and breaking things." Azula pecked at the salad on offer. "I defeated Long Feng because he feared that one day the people who served under him in the Dai Lee might rebel because of some deficiency in his command. I had no such reservations and no real interest in the Dai Lee except as agents to gain the city for the Fire Nation. He came from a peasant background and subconsciously always tried to hide that. I grew up believing I could not face defeat because I had trained hard and had a gift – I believed myself faster, better and stronger than Long Feng or you or Katara or the Avatar or my brother."
"Long Feng fell because deep down he lacked confidence in his own powers as an Earth Bender and the ability to command the Dai Lee. You did not and could convince them to follow you." The King sat back on crossed legs and mused as he scratched his face. "You took a risk and the Dai Lee had something to gain."
"I didn't believe in all that 'Divine Right to Rule' stuff but I gave the men in a brutal lecture but some of them bought into it. Others wanted to keep their jobs and pension. In spite of their individual motives, they dumped Long Feng and did my bidding." Azula looked to Katara and then to Aang.
"Would you have spared my life?" Kue took on an earnest look. "Had you captured me?"
"Yes." Azula sipped her tea. "You didn't pose a threat except that you rallied the Earth Kingdom generals. They could have posed a threat with their armies to the Fire Nation. I restrict my murder plots to the people who stood in my way if I could not remove them in less lethal ways."
"How did a charming young woman become so skilled in military affairs." King Kue showed a lack of his own social skills but much of the Fire Nation occupation of his city left unanswered questions and she could answer some of them. He had a duty to his nation to ask the questions.
"I became shaped for war by my father and he trusted me because I seemed devoid of conscience and obeyed his orders. I took the actions I had to as needed." Azula placed her tea down. "I made mistakes in judgment every bit as costly as the one Long Feng made. Ba Sing Se doesn't consist of a city – it's a nation surrounded by walls. All the real power lay in the hands of the palace eunuchs and the tens of thousands of civil servants hired to make the city run – tax collectors, engineers that make the water and sewers work, transportation, taxation, accounting and a hundred and one mundane tasks that keep people from open revolt. The Fire Nation and Dai Lee took over from you but holding Ba Sing Se became a huge burden."
The King nodded and the bear stared at Azula who in a burst of recall remembered the bear had the name 'Bosco'.
"Consider the palace eunuchs again. For men with no balls they had an endless talent for scheming." Azula felt like someone running for student council at a high high school and she had the entire school watching her every word hoping to witness something humiliating such as a Freudian slip. She had the oddest feeling she had no pants but when she checked they were in place. She looked around then resumed. "They had a great talent for singing though."
"I can begin to understand." The King sipped his tea and adjusted his glasses.
"You have had to deal with this then?" Azula looked briefly at Katara examining her face for disapproval.
"I have their loyalty but they do hatch the odd scheme; but if it remains harmless we let it slide." The King smiled as he found this humorous.
"They wouldn't overtly filibuster us." Azula put her hands on her knees and began to rather enjoy explaining these matters. "They delivered important news late or at least some time after it had ceased to serve any useful purpose. They made mistakes in accounting or ordering – which led to the Fire Nation occupation forces having no army boots but we did enjoy a surplus of fine ladies shoes. They scheduled the palace staff in odd shifts so the palace cook worked from 2 in the morning until 4 on odd days of the month and guards went days without a break. They had an endless talent for misplacing things or at least losing them in the filing system in such a manner as to make them as irretrievable as a dead man buried in a glacier. Rooms changed function so the military communications department behaved like a homeless refugee and had no fixed address. If you could find it then it moved shortly thereafter. All the working lavatories were on the opposite side of the palace from where most people worked. If you found one that worked it had no bog rolls."
"Why do you think you lost the War?" The King asked and everyone shifted uneasily once more except for Uncle Iroh who had begun to enjoy a fine noodle soup.
"I came up with a devastatingly ineffective plan of burning the Earth Kingdom to the ground when Sozin's Comet returned and fire benders enjoyed their full powers." Azula grinned slyly. "This plan had several flaws. The biggest flaw - my father liked it. I learned the hard way any plan endorsed by a man who dubs himself the Phoenix King will cock up in some way."
"I had wanted to come along to properly guide the efforts and prevent my father from doing something vastly stupid things such as pick a fight with the Avatar." Azula drank some water to clear her throat and let her burning resentment carry her further. "I got left behind and dad hid the airship fleet in plain sight where anyone could find them. He could have made his defeat somewhat more difficult if he didn't dress himself up in his 'gay parrot' Phoenix King outfit and stand in the open. He could have let his minions do the heavy lifting and hidden but he had something about this 'hands on approach' to the apocalypse. I utterly ignored the fact that the earth benders had a simple defense for our attack. Run and hide underground and wait it out. I realized this after I had seen my dad off but felt in no mood to tell him."
"And what about the final defeat?" The King leaned forward until the sleeve of his robe had touched his soup.
Aang entered into the equation later." Azula coughed and drank some more tea. " I can tell what evil and self serving people might do – I understand them. I can never figure out what fools or people with good moral conscience will do. I never knew Zuko had it in him to defy our father and join the Avatar – I kind of hoped for a flying leap off a palace parapet in one of his more moody episodes. At the time that could have served my purposes nicely. I didn't think Mai would betray me, risk her life and save Zuko. I didn't think Ty Lee had the courage to attack me to save her friend."
Katar stared at Aang who stared blankly at Uncle Iroh. Uncle Iroh had grown quite interested in Azula's take on historical events and listened intently.
"I didn't think the White Lotus could take back Ba Sing Se." Azula had the creeping suspicion she had said far too much but she continued anyway. She had the same kind of inertia a large steam ship had when its rudders failed and it blundered into a marina – she decided to continue to blunder ahead until she ran out of momentum or crashed into something bigger and more massive. She found the ability to speak freely somewhat cathartic. "I thought they consisted of a charity that raised money for cancer kids or vaccinated farm animals for anthrax. I didn't think a man with a pet lemur could take away my dad's ability to bend or that a two bit moron and his girlfriend could destroy the entire airship fleet. You have your sleeve in your soup."
"Oh my yes." The King lifted his arm out of the soup.
"Two bit moron?" Katara slapped Azula on the arm.
"I will shut up now and have some soup." Azula looked down at the brown liquid with vegetables and noodles. She recalled that the Earth Kingdom Palace had passable food.