This far in the north, the dawn comes slow. Morning, girded in lavenders and tentative oranges, announces itself quietly, never quite pushing out the silver-blue sheen captured by the icebergs and crags during the night. No matter how hot the day will become, the snow sits unperturbed by the sun's ineffective glare.
Desna has only recently come to regard the sunrise with anything but anxiety, but today it infuriates him.
The ice should be melting. There can be no pride in its cold refusal to submit to the heat — after what happened in the night, it's a betrayal. Every step he takes should web the floor with hairline fractures, shake the walls of the palace to their liquid foundations, churn the sea over on itself. Should pull a tsunami, those rare tides generated in the deep waters to the west, to rise with divine rage until it smashes the Northern Water Tribe into the sea floor where they all belong.
It is his masterful restraint, not a lack of ability, that keeps his people totally unaware of his fury.
"Chieftain?"
And their own simple-mindedness. His lips twitch.
He does not stop. That's what he did last night, frozen cold with his own attack in mid-strike. As useful as an iceberg in a shipping lane, and as much of an obstacle to the skilled.
And he still hasn't figured out where Eska has gone.
"Chief Desna!"
Through the thundercloud of his thoughts Desna recognizes the man's voice — boy's, really — and finally slows to a halt, even while the ringing words darken his mood to a cold hurricane. Not because Natorr is loud and brash and persistent, polar opposite of the twins he is sworn to protect. Not because he owes it to the son of his father's admiral. And certainly not because he wants to talk to this unsubtle idiot, who's been mooning after seemingly half the court, who preaches that leaving the South Pole was a mistake.
He waits because his bodyguard is so frostbitten obtuse that he'll follow Desna until dusk without once noticing anything wrong with his chieftain.
And Desna has little patience for the youth on the best of days.
Which is not today.
Over and done with.
"Natorr."
"Chief Desna." Natorr stops in front of him, spins on his heel, and bows twice. Even impassioned and sincere, the motion looks so odd — and gratifying — on the well-muscled youth that Desna decides to give him one minute. "We need to respond to this."
Nevermind. Thirty seconds.
"Continue."
"The other nations will see this as weakness. A handful of intruders stealing a prisoner we swore to guard?" Natorr spits, a gesture Desna appreciates. "I don't need to tell you how precarious this makes our position, especially so soon after our failure to hold the South."
Desna rolls his eyes, temper billowing dangerously. "If war is on your mind, perhaps you should consider that we were soundly thrashed not hours ago in our home territory. A show of strength right now is as empty as it is counterproductive. All the more so given Father's mistakes."
Natorr puffs out his chest. "Then we'll train. We'll get stronger. And then we'll prove it."
Amazing. "As you should."
"But the generals are calling for —"
"They'll survive." Desna widens his eyes and holds Natorr's gaze, hoping to unsettle him. "Is there anything else?"
The dismissal in his tone flows right around Natorr, though if he were feeling generous Desna would admit that only his twin truly catches his inflections. "The council sent me to tell you, that is, to ask if, to request a—"
"They want to meet me and my sister."
"Yes," Natorr finishes, obviously relieved.
He gestures, and Desna inclines his head. "To our room."
Natorr doesn't bat an eye. Other siblings sharing a room as co-chieftains would be a topic of gossip; for Desna and Eska, it's just them. Not either twin's intent, but it saves Desna some headaches. Besides, being so distant from others' norms leads to most behavior being dismissed or misunderstood — useful, when trying to rule.
They march in silence. Or rather, Desna does. Natorr babbles, his pitch-colored locks bouncing with each energetic stride. Strangely, it matches his mood rather than exacerbates it, and his fury is checked for the remaining walk to his and Eska's bedroom.
Which is empty.
Desna drinks in the dimly lit room, seeking the details that she might have left for him. A tinted mirror, an upturned coverlet, perhaps even a warmed floor. None. Nothing removed from the tub he sleeps in. Not only isn't she here, she hasn't been since before the prison break.
Perhaps she went to the crags?
"Perfectly made bed, untouched dresser…she didn't sleep here."
Desna twitches. Vapid observations, if properly directed. As if Eska isn't as precise as a Zaofu blade. Spirits, is he the only person in this damned palace who can see?
He turns to Natorr. And this buffoon is supposed to guard us against —
Sunbrowned face losing its color, the bodyguard backs away from Desna's glare. "I-I'll go, Chieftain, I mean, I'll find her, she has to be around here somewhere. She's as quiet as a shadow when she wants to be, but if she'd left the palace we'd have known…"
Desna blinks. Then again. "Not necessarily."
Natorr's frown is as exaggerated as the rest of him. "Chieftain?"
Of course his shadowbending chamber is where she would go in the wake of their humiliation — it's where she would expect him to go.
His sister is nothing if not caring.
"Chieftain, er, Des—"
"No." Best to stop his sputtering before it begins again. "Gather our council to meet at midday. I will speak with my sister."
Without another word, Desna sweeps away, his robes softly swishing on the ice.
Desna's shadowbending chamber is a room even Father had never discovered. Cut out from the cliff face a mile from the main city, thirty feet below the summit, it's the perfect retreat. Its entrance is invisible from almost every angle of the sea, and Desna has wrapped it in so many complex cocoons of salt and freshwater ice that none less than a Waterbending master could sense out its contours from a distance, and even then only if they knew what they sought.
Begun on his and Eska's ninth birthday, it took Desna two years to carve. Two careful, moody, secret-laden years of weekly labor, each sunrise carrying with it the terror that he would be discovered.
He approaches from the water, a wave lifting him to the entrance. Usually he slid down the cliff face from above, following his momentum to slide smoothly into the twisting tunnel, but never has he trusted himself so little as this morning. The thought disturbs him enough that the spiral torques of his carefully crafted entryway do nothing to shake his mood.
The chamber is a reflection of its many origins, with the subtlest differences in color between the ice variants. Light enters through the tunnel behind Desna, but there is another shaft cut up toward the summit. This one bends back on itself a dozen times. The light that comes in is indirect, ambient rather than blinding, bolstered and focused just enough by his meticulously placed ice mirrors to create a canvas for his art.
Depending on the strength of the sun's rays or the moonlight glow, the dominant color could be seawater-teal, or deepwater blue budding with ambitious purples and complementary silvers, or — as it is right now — the pure ice-blue of the Northern glaciers, darkened to richness by the early morning.
It's a haunting retreat. A masterpiece.
Her blue-violet robes damp with sweat and icemelt, her shoulders ever so slightly hunched, Eska looks like she's been here for hours.
"You've learned how to fold them," Desna says. I didn't expect to find you here hangs beneath his statement, another stalactite in the cavern of unspoken words that only the two of them know even exists.
She says nothing, guiding the elements across the azure-lit floor, but when the twisting ice dips low and brushes its own shadow her blue-eyed rebuke lashes him like a water-whip.
Desna dips his head, accepting his sister's equal measures of admonishment and concern. What a fool he's been, these last few hours. He does not show the outside world, but between the two of them he's always been the more temperamental, the one whose anger hardens quicker and takes longer to thaw. For him not to trust Eska to remember that, and to take the surest action in response?
Last night has unsettled him more than he's admitted to himself. Even made him afraid.
All the more reason for him to be here, with the rage freezing his veins purple.
He steps to her side, the movement both apology and thanks.
Eska lets the ice hang for a moment so that he can reach his senses into its familiar chill. It slips into his grasp an eyeblink too quickly, the fall of its weight an ounce too jarring, and Desna offers his sister a sympathetic frown.
Together in this, too.
Shadowbending is Desna's hobby, not Eska's, and even with his direction she is no expert. But their bond is the tide, not the tundra, and so this time Desna takes the unagi's share of control.
Keeping his eyes on the ice, he plays a sequence of basic designs. Children's First Sight. Spirits and the Chieftain. The Prisoner Scared of His Shadow. Fish Diving Deep.
Desna finds himself juggling more than he'd have expected. Far more. Not only was Eska maneuvering and warping the frozen water above her, she held the entire icy chamber around them. It vibrates ever so slightly, like a frozen pond weeping in spring — and now it's his, and any loss of control on his part could bring chunks down on him. Or even shake the whole chamber to pieces. A low grunt escapes him.
Strong as ever, sister, if transparent. Of course she's encouraging him, in her ruthless way, to focus away from his rage.
Any other time, he might be proud, or appreciative, or miffed.
But there's no room for any of that — for thought, for feeling, even for reaction. Just the finely-tuned work of maintaining equilibrium and responding to the light, the instincts that brought him to shadowbending in the first place.
His designs multiply in number and complexity. The Hundred-Armed Tree with the Wave that Sank a City. Pockets in the Sea smashed by the Unagi Chariot. The Meeting of Moon and Sun encircled by a twist on the Southern Wolfpack.
Beads of sweat collect on his brow, and within them an opportunity. Plucking them from his skin, Desna holds them up. Incredibly faint and tiny compared to the looping stream, they hang before him, twinkling refractions of sunlight. Forcing his breathing to slow, he adds them to the main water flow. His trembling effort rattles the chamber's icy walls, but it's necessary.
To put tiny pieces of himself back into the semi-permanence of the fjord is his signature.
"This is what Tonraq meant," Eska says into the quiet, her voice without inflection. "At our coronation."
Desna watches her shadow pull the ice into two liquid arcs. Both a statement and a question, then. He responds in kind, merging the streams only to split them again. "You don't believe they'd tell us if there were others."
A spear erupts from the walls with Eska's shrug, a new element introduced into their complicated dance. Desna considers it as he crafts his own thoughts in dark blue and silver. Her anger, when stirred, is a fearsome thing, and unlike him she's already found a place to direct it.
And she has a point, one that fuels Desna's fury. With no time to prepare, no time to bolster or adapt their defenses, defeat was a foregone conclusion. Given months or even weeks to study the fortress, he could have found any number of flaws. Instead, their uncle and the former Firelord treated the twins like helpless children.
But why not?
Desna's hands quiver so violently that his sleeves shake.
We were children. We threw water and ice and they moved through us like a cutter through calm. A Waterbender who slipped through the snow like an eel. A Firebender who shot down a dragon.
The ice strikes, the water whirls. Faster, faster. The sound of a shard, flying from his overtaxed grip, cutting his eardrums when it skitters on the chamber wall.
A snake's helpless contortions, azure on deep blue. Rushing water, diving into its shadow to shatter only to reform and spin into a whirlwind. No crafted designs, or none that last long enough to be recognized. Only waves of wrath, building and breaking.
Faster.
A involuntary hiss from beside him, of strain, of pain.
Chagrin.
Water and ice crash to the floor, and the room is released from his grasp. Pushing his sister's inexperience in his art toward excellence is her request. To do so thoughtlessly, however, is unforgivable.
"Lack of control should be beneath you, brother." She isn't angry at him, of course, but he prefers to pretend she is. It suits his mood, and his blame.
"No one can control everything," Desna responds before realizing what he's said. He frowns.
Eska narrows her eyes thoughtfully, and his lips twitch. He is so rarely the target of her analytical stare that he tends to forget how piercing it is. "Clean it up."
She doesn't need to tell him that she won't leave until it is, or that each passing minute will amplify her irritation toward true anger, wrath hot enough to make the palace sweat. When Eska is denied the control of cleanliness and precision, her fierce temper rivals his own.
Quietly, he restores the walls and floor. Light shimmers on the water as it slides into the walls, sunbeams breaking off the various gradients. He fills cracks, returns shards to their proper places. In a couple places he changes the composition of the water, just a little, before freezing it.
When the room is clear, returned to its patchwork kaleidoscope of royal blues and shaded icewhite, Desna finds that the rage is gone too, or at least sufficiently muted. In its place is a moonless midnight of a mood, but under its sway he won't break anything, like a table or a person or the palace.
And then he understands. So clever in its stark simplicity, this plan from his conniving sister. It almost - not quite, but almost - sneaks a smile through his grim self-loathing.
Eska walks to one of the walls, gently stroking a particularly dark patch of ice before turning back to him. "So our generals expect a plan." Do you feel better?
Desna purses his lips, glancing at the sunlight glimmering through the roof chute.
She pokes his shoulder, a light two-fingered jab, and Desna's surprise eclipses his mood. Such an overt display of affection from his sister is rare, even in private as they are now. Perhaps it won't take a week for his composure to return after all.
And until it has…
He flicks her a series of rapid questions, and Eska's expression lightens with something approaching predatory glee.
"Of course I will, Desna," she tells him, and he finally offers her a grin. As usual, he can always count on her pleasure in dealing with the fools on their council. "Just let me do the talking."
"And the whipping."
She returns his smile. "How fortunate I am that my co-chieftain knows me so well."