Prologue: The First Two Weeks
They came in the early summer, two months after her father and the other warriors left.
There was no black snow this time, for the boat they came in was not large enough to spew that much soot into the air. It wasn't even a warship, as they would later realize, though that hadn't stopped Sokka from doing his best to muster what little defenses he could - if a half-finished snow wall and a thirteen-year-old with a club could even be counted as defenses. The stout old man in half-armor who disembarked first certainly didn't seem to think so.
Unfazed by Sokka's war cry - which even Katara knew would have been more impressive had his voice not cracked in the middle of it - the old man easily caught the club with one hand when Sokka swung it at him. His grip was firm enough that Sokka could not break it, but he made no counter attack of his own. "Please, young man," he said in a tired voice, looking down at Sokka with pity. "Let's not make this harder than it has to be."
Sokka, to his credit, let go of the club and drew his knife. It was a knife meant more for cleaning fish than fighting, but it could be deadly enough. Yet the old man swatted aside that attack as well, and the knife went flying into the snow. When Sokka resorted to punches and kicks, they proved just as ineffective.
At last, the old man caught both of Sokka's wrists. "Please," he repeated. "You have shown your courage, young warrior. Now stand down, and no one will be hurt."
"Liar!" Sokka shouted, struggling helplessly against the old man's grip. "You're here to kill us!"
"No," the old man replied, shaking his head. "We have not been sent to destroy your tribe, but to govern it."
Behind the half-finished wall where Katara was crouched, watching, there were gasps and murmurs from the other women who clutched fish-knives of their own with shaking hands. They were less trained even than Sokka, but just as prepared to fight desperately if it came to that. They had never imagined the Fire Lord, half a world away, would ever consider their village worth governing.
"Never!" Sokka shouted defiantly. "You are not our chief!" Katara felt a surge of pride for her brother, and a pang of anger at her father for not being here to defend his own position, as well as the whole tribe, from this foreign invader.
"You misunderstand," the old man replied, as maddeningly calm as ever. "It is not I who has been appointed. It is Prince Zuko." Then he dropped one of Sokka's wrists, stepped to the side, and pointed behind him, to the top of the gangplank of the boat, at someone that no one had taken notice of until now.
He was a boy about Sokka's age, in full Fire Nation armor and a red cloak that almost looked too big for him. Half his face was covered with bandages, and he was scowling at them. Katara thought he was the most pathetic looking person she had ever seen, and she hated him.
Then, Prince Zuko spoke.
"Your chief Hakoda and his men attacked a Fire Nation convoy in our waters," he began, sounding like he was reciting a prepared speech. He began to walk slowly down the gangplank. "They fought...with honor," he went on, the last word said with some difficulty through gritted teeth. His water tribe audience waited with bated breath as he paused in the middle of the gangplank, swallowed, then continued. "The survivors were presented to the Fire Lord, among them Chief Hakoda, who surrendered this." He reached behind his back, removed something from his belt, and held it up for all to see.
Katara gasped this time along with the others. In Prince Zuko's hand was an elaborately carved whalebone knife. It was her father's knife. The knife of the chief.
"The Fire Lord has given it to me," Prince Zuko concluded unnecessarily as he reached the bottom of the gangplank and set foot on the icy surface of the south pole for the first time. "I am in charge here now." He lifted his chin, daring anyone to challenge him, knowing that no one could. The knife had come to him fairly, by their own rules of war.
Katara hated him even more.
"That could have gone better," Zuko commented to his uncle when they were back aboard their ship, less than an hour after he had delivered the speech his father had written for him. That was all the time it had taken for the women and children that constituted what was left of the Southern Water Tribe to acknowledge his authority, and for him to survey his new dominion - a collection of tents, a few canoes, and barren antarctic wasteland as far as the eye could see in every direction. He and Uncle Iroh would have to continue living aboard ship until some more suitable dwelling could be constructed.
"But it also could have gone much worse," Iroh replied, ever the optimist. "They did accept you, after all."
"They didn't have much choice," Zuko scoffed, removing his cloak and throwing it on his bunk in the narrow hold. "One boy wasn't going to stop us, even if it weren't for their primitive superstition about this thing." He brandished the crude knife that now represented the last shred of dignity he possessed. It wasn't even sharp, and would be useless in a fight. If losing it meant so much, Hakoda should have left it at home.
"A good leader does not dismiss the beliefs of his people so lightly," Iroh cautioned, sitting down on his own bunk, opposite Zuko's. There was about three feet of empty space between them. The rest of the hold was filled with crates and barrels of supplies. "Like it or not," his uncle went on, "these are your people now."
With a strangled cry of frustration, Zuko threw the knife down on top of his cloak. "This is ridiculous!" he fumed, pacing the small space. "If there were any waterbenders left here, they would have been sent out to fight us!"
"So it would seem," Iroh replied evenly. "But you are tired from our journey, Prince Zuko, and still recovering." Zuko flinched at the reminder, one hand instinctively moving towards the bandaged half of his face, but he checked the motion with great effort, clenching his hand into a fist instead. "Why don't you rest for a while?" his uncle suggested.
"No," Zuko insisted, marching the short distance to the chest at the foot of his bunk that was filled with scrolls, everything they had been able to find about the Southern Water Tribe in the royal library. "I have work to do." He had skimmed over most of the information as they had sailed south, but now that they were here, he could begin his research in a more focused manner, starting with how to construct buildings out of ice. Then, later, he would have to do a formal census - that shouldn't take long - and draft his first report to his father.
"Very well," Iroh said reluctantly. "Would you like some tea while you work?"
Zuko made a vague noise of assent, already focused on his task. He picked out three of the more promising scrolls, then sat down on his bunk to read. He barely noticed when his uncle gently forced a teacup into his hand a short while later.
Ice building didn't sound like it would be too hard, if he put enough people to work on it. The women here might have been content raising their children in squalid little tents, but he knew they could do better. It would have been even easier with waterbenders, of course…
"Some of the children are quite young," Zuko mused aloud, looking down at his still untouched teacup.
"Very young indeed," Iroh agreed.
"One of them might turn out to be a waterbender, someday," Zuko went on, his grip on the teacup tightening. And a young child, who probably wouldn't even remember any other chief besides him, surely that child would be loyal to him? And when he had the unquestioned loyalty of a southern waterbender, then he would have met the conditions for his banishment to be lifted, and proved to his father…
"I suppose that might be the case," Uncle Iroh said. "Destiny, after all, is a funny thing."
The sun dipped low on his course around the horizon, without fully sinking beneath it, then began his ascent again, marking the next morning. Prince Zuko set up a makeshift desk near where his boat had made landfall, and the old man, General Iroh, escorted the villagers one by one to be interviewed by him. Sokka was first, and Katara would have loved to have been able to eavesdrop - but there was nowhere close enough for her to hide.
"What did he say?" Katara demanded as soon as her brother returned to their tent.
Sokka sat by the fire next to her. "What you'd expect from a Fire Nation jerk," he said sullenly, hugging his knees to his chest and glaring at the flames. "He wants to send a report to the Fire Lord about the 'status of the tribe' - as if the Fire Lord doesn't know."
Katara's hands clenched into fists, and the water boiling in the pot over the fire sloshed dangerously.
"Oh yeah," Sokka added darkly. "He asked if I was a waterbender."
With an angry growl, Katara turned away from the fire, putting distance between herself and the simmering pot. There was only one reason he would have asked about that. General Iroh might have said they weren't there to hurt anyone, but Katara knew what had happened to all the waterbenders in their tribe. All except her.
"When it's your turn," Sokka said, gripping her shoulder firmly, "when they ask you, you lie, got it?"
Katara nodded her understanding, hot tears of anger welling up in her eyes. She squeezed them shut. Lying about her bending now would mean hiding it from here on out, as long as their new Fire Nation governor remained. And there was only one way she could see that they might get rid of him. "Did you see it?" she choked out. "Was it real?"
Sokka's hand fell away from her shoulder. "It's the real knife, Katara," he confirmed. "There's no doubt about it." He would know, after all, he had studied the knife in their father's hands on countless long polar nights, as Hakoda had explained to his firstborn all the symbols carved into it and what they meant, and all the sacred power it held that would one day be in his hands.
All the sacred power that was now in the hands of their enemy.
Katara's turn to be interviewed came not long after. General Iroh smiled gently when he came for her, but she glared at him. He wasn't fooling her. Prince Zuko, at least, didn't bother with any charade of friendliness.
"Your name and age?" he asked bluntly, scowling just like he had yesterday, one good eye conveying enough contempt for two.
"Katara," she replied, scowling right back. "And I'm eleven."
Prince Zuko made a note of this in his ledger, while Katara eyed the knife set casually on the desk by his left hand. As Sokka had said, it was undeniably authentic.
"Your parents?" Prince Zuko questioned, not looking up from the page of his ledger.
"My father is Hakoda," she answered proudly. That did get his attention, and he looked up in surprise. "My mother…"
"Kya, deceased," Prince Zuko supplied for her. "Your brother already told me." He looked back down at his notes, and something inside Katara snapped.
"Did he tell you how she died?" Katara shouted at him. "Did he tell you how your soldiers killed her inside our home, for no reason at all?"
Prince Zuko's hand stilled mid-character. There was a tense moment of silence where Katara's heart pounded, wondering if he would strike her for her insolence. But he merely shifted his grip on his pen, without looking at her, and made some additional notes. "That should not have happened," he said tersely. "I will mention it to the Fire Lord in my report."
"Like the Fire Lord cares," Katara shot back.
Prince Zuko treated her to an even more ferocious one-eyed glare. "You don't understand what you're talking about," he all but growled at her.
"I don't understand?" she echoed irately. "You're the one who has no idea!" If she had control over her bending, she could have cracked the ice beneath him right then and there and let the ocean swallow him up. But her eyes shot back to the knife, and she remembered the boiling pot in her tent, and reined in her anger.
"You'll see," Prince Zuko said ominously. What she would see, he did not elaborate on as he finished his notes. "One more question." He looked her directly in the eye this time. "Are you a waterbender?"
Katara focused on the prince's one good eye, uncowed by its unblinking gold intensity. "No," she said. "I'm not." And she knew that now that he was here, it might as well be true.
On the deck of the ship, Zuko read over his report one last time. The population of the South Pole currently consisted of the following: nine women, ranging in age from seventeen to sixty-eight; ten children, of whom Hakoda's daughter Katara was the oldest at eleven, and the youngest were still infants in their mothers' arms; and Sokka, Hakoda's son, who was the same age as Zuko. Including Zuko and Iroh, that was a total of twenty-two people, soon to be twenty-three, for one of the women was pregnant. Her husband, like all the men, had left with Hakoda.
Though the tribe's infrastructure was abysmal, the fishing was good. Hunting large game was out of the question for the time being, though Zuko planned to make that his next priority after erecting permanent houses. Eventually, they would need more furs for their own use, as well as to re-establish trade with the southern islands.
He had not identified any waterbenders yet, but seven of the children were still under the age of five, which was generally the latest that bending abilities might manifest, at least in the Fire Nation. Zuko assumed the same was true for waterbenders.
At the end of the report, there was a short paragraph explaining that it seemed Fire Nation soldiers had killed civilians on their last raid. Zuko had hesitated to include that, but he had told the girl he would, and he didn't want to begin his governorship by going back on his word. Besides, his father would want to know the truth, however unpleasant, so long as Zuko presented it in a respectful manner. Which he had.
So why was he reluctant to send the report now?
Zuko rolled up the paper, but made no move to seal it yet. Instead, he looked out at the frigid blue ocean they had crossed to come here, then the vast white expanse of the South Pole. It had all the appearance of emptiness and desolation. Was he holding on to some fool's hope that something more promising would emerge from all that ice and snow? What could they have hidden from him, when the sun had not even set?
With an angry frown, Zuko thrust his hand into the pouch on his belt that held his wax and seal, his fingers brushing against the hilt of the chief's knife as he removed them. Carefully melting the tip of the wax with his firebending, he sealed the report, then stalked over to the perch at the stern of the ship where the messenger hawk was waiting. He slid the scroll into a protective leather tube, sealed that as well, and sent the hawk on its way.
It would take at least three days for the messenger hawk to reach the nearest Fire Nation relay tower, and another three or four from there for the message to be sent on to the capital. If his father replied immediately, the earliest Zuko could expect a response would be in two weeks.
He watched the hawk until it was a distant black dot in the sky. Then he disembarked from the ship and headed towards the village. By the time the hawk returned, he planned to have many accomplishments to report.
When the sun had made another circuit around the horizon, General Iroh gathered everyone in the village together to hear the next pronouncement from their new chief, now that he had sent his report to the Fire Lord. Katara knew her father would have called the tribe together himself, but Prince Zuko was apparently above such things.
There were cautious whispers about what the prince might want with them as they waited for him to arrive. All the people of the South Pole had ever known the Fire Nation to do was kill and destroy, and it was hard to imagine anything else. They didn't have the resources of the Earth Kingdom to exploit, or the wealth to tax. Surely the Fire Lord hadn't sent his son here just to collect seal jerky and salted fish from them. But what other motive there might be, they could not guess.
Prince Zuko came dressed in the same armor and cloak he had worn on his first appearance. Katara noticed this time how the cloak dragged behind him in the snow. It really was too big, and very impractical - it wasn't even lined with fur. Maybe he would catch his death of cold, Katara thought hopefully.
But Prince Zuko was also now wearing the chief's knife openly on his hip, and he placed one hand on it as he spoke. "My first act as governor," he declared with his customary grim demeanor, "will be to improve the inadequate housing in your village."
"You expect us to build you a palace?" Sokka spoke up boldly, crossing his arms over his chest. Their father had always known how to gracefully take criticism, but there was no telling how this Fire Nation prince would react.
Prince Zuko's uncovered eye narrowed. "I expect you to build houses for yourselves," he clarified. "I've been reading about ice construction, and there's no reason for you to be living in tents…"
"Prince Zuko," Katara heard Gran Gran's voice from behind her, perfectly respectful but very firm. "Do you know what happened to the ice houses we used to have?"
The prince frowned. "I understand that there have been...difficulties, in recent years, but now…"
"Many buildings were destroyed by your soldiers," Gran Gran answered her own question, a remarkably patient explanation in Katara's opinion. "Many more were damaged, and of course it became harder to repair them the fewer waterbenders we had left." Katara had thought Prince Zuko could not frown any deeper, but he proved her wrong. And still, Gran Gran went on. "Then there were the houses where our people were killed, which had to be torn down."
Katara looked away from the prince, her fists clenched in anger. Her own home had been one of those razed to ward off the dark spirits, after the violence done there three years ago. Her father had done most of the demolition himself, refusing help from anyone, even Bato, until he had nearly exhausted himself. There had been no question of rebuilding then, and no real possibility of it once the men had left. But now this Fire Nation prince came and spoke of ice houses as if he knew, as if he understood…
"But it's still possible to build new houses, even without waterbenders," Prince Zuko was insisting. "Who here has experience in construction?"
There was an awkward silence. Sokka stepped forward without a word.
"That's it?" the prince asked incredulously. No offense to her brother, Katara thought, but hadn't he seen the wall? What had given him the impression they had a master builder among them?
"Well, there are no waterbenders," Sokka pointed out. Thanks to you, was the unspoken implication, at least as Katara heard it. "And otherwise building is left to the men, and the rest of them aren't here." Also thanks to you.
Prince Zuko's whole body seemed to tense, and his uncovered eye screwed shut. Behind his shoulder, General Iroh said something in a low voice, and the prince let out a frustrated sigh. Katara thought she saw flames lick his lips.
"Fine," the prince said tersely. He opened his eye, gaze sweeping over the crowd. "Sokka will confer with me and my uncle about the plans for new construction. The rest of you are dismissed."
It was nothing at all against her brother, but Katara hoped they failed. She hoped a block of ice fell on Zuko's head and killed him, and Iroh went away and never came back, and the whole Fire Nation left them alone with their sealskin tents that no one had complained about before her father left.
But so far, nothing had gone as she had hoped.
Sokka was wary about following Zuko and Iroh onto their ship, though he did a good job hiding it. Zuko had to begrudgingly respect the other boy's fortitude. Rather than squeeze three people into the cramped hold of the ship, Zuko told Sokka to wait on deck while he and Iroh brought up everything they would need - the relevant scrolls from the library, paper and ink, cushions to sit on, and, at his uncle's insistence, tea. Zuko cast a glance at the messenger hawk's empty perch as the three of them settled into a circle and Iroh boiled the kettle.
"Those are Water Tribe scrolls," Sokka said in amazement when Zuko unrolled the first document he wanted to go over. "Where did you get those?"
Zuko glanced at the scroll in question, which had to be at least a hundred years old. The parchment was thicker than any produced in the Fire Nation, and the characters were written in a different script style that had taken Zuko a while to get used to reading. If Sokka recognized it, that meant the other boy could read, which would save them a lot of time.
"They were in the palace library," Zuko answered his question, although it was beside the point.
"How did they get there?" Sokka asked suspiciously.
"I don't know," Zuko replied. "It doesn't matter."
"What I think Prince Zuko means," Iroh said pointedly in response to Sokka's obvious displeasure with Zuko's answer, "is that the royal library is very old, and these particular texts have been part of the collection for some time."
Sokka nodded in understanding, somewhat mollified, though Zuko noticed his uncle's careful specification. These particular scrolls had come to the Fire Nation ages ago, but there were others still below deck that had definitely been acquired by the Southern Raiders in more recent times, including the few waterbending scrolls he had. Zuko decided not to mention them.
Trying to bring the conversation back to the point, Zuko turned the scroll to face Sokka and tapped the parchment with one finger. "This author's focus was more aesthetic than structural, but it's the best information I have. You must already know some of it…" But Sokka clearly had stopped listening as he leaned forward, eyes roaming eagerly over the characters on the scroll. Zuko accepted a cup of tea from his uncle, and let the other boy read.
"That's probably why it keeps collapsing," Sokka muttered to himself after a moment, which did not inspire Zuko with great confidence in his experience. But like the scroll, this was the best he had to work with. He would make the most of it.
Sokka turned out to be a fast reader. "Okay," he said a few minutes later, accepting his own cup of tea from Iroh. "That is helpful. What else you got?"
They spent the next two hours going over all of Zuko's information, comparing it to what Sokka knew, and drawing up rough sketches for modest ice houses that they thought would be achievable. It was odd, Zuko thought, that the son of the former chief would work with him with so little complaint. But Sokka was adapting to the tribe's new circumstances far more readily than his sister or anyone else seemed to be. As much as the other boy clearly resented Zuko, he knew how to put the good of his people before his own feelings.
The thought spurred an irrational wave of anger that Zuko quickly stamped down. If Sokka could do it, so could he.
The sun repeated his circular dance several times, and Sokka began helping Zuko and Iroh build an actual ice house. Katara got part of her wish - the first attempt did fall down, though no one was hurt. She knew she really should have been grateful that it hadn't killed her brother.
On the second attempt, Katara watched them more closely. It looked like they had made the walls thicker, which made the footprint of the house smaller, though it was still, admittedly, far bigger than a tent. "Go away, Katara," Sokka chided her as he and Zuko positioned another block of ice on what would be the back wall of the house, if they were successful. "We don't need kids hanging around while we work."
"She's not getting in the way," Iroh came to her defense. "Let her watch, if she's curious."
But Katara knew what Sokka was really worried about - that she would lose control of her volatile waterbending again, and give away her secret. She had accidentally frozen Sokka's bowl of soup last night at dinner when they had argued about this very subject, her older brother insisting that she stay as far away from Zuko and Iroh as possible and Katara protesting that he shouldn't be hanging around them all day either if they were really so dangerous.
But they both knew Sokka was right. The danger was far greater for her. She just hated feeling left behind, like the Fire Nation was taking her brother away from her, too.
"Like I really want to watch you stack ice cubes just so they can fall down again," Katara scoffed, and stomped away to find something else to do.
The second house also collapsed, a few hours later. Katara was pretty sure it wasn't her fault, no matter what Sokka said.
The fourteenth cycle of never-ending day since Zuko had arrived at the South Pole came and went. The raw skin under Zuko's bandages hurt less, and itched more, which Uncle Iroh assured him was a sign it was healing. He still refused to look anywhere near the mirror when the bandages were off.
The messenger hawk did not return, nor was another sent in its place. Iroh gently urged him to be patient, and perhaps it was for the best. He and Sokka had not yet managed to build a stable ice structure, the rest of the tribe was as wary of him as ever, and he was, of course, no closer to identifying a single waterbender, let alone winning their unquestioned loyalty. If his father's reply came now, he would have nothing new to report.
"If we can't figure out how to make the walls sturdy enough on their own," Sokka mused, snapping Zuko out of his reverie. "Maybe we could reinforce them?"
Zuko tore his eyes away from the empty messenger hawk perch to focus on the other boy, once again seated across from him on the deck of his ship, with all of their notes and schematics spread out between them. "Reinforce them with what?" he asked. "Wood?"
Sokka shook his head. "Wood's too hard to come by," he said. "And whalebone wouldn't be strong enough. I was thinking metal."
"Metal," Zuko echoed in a skeptical deadpan. "Where are we going to get metal?"
"Well," Sokka replied, stretching out the word and tilting his head to one side, considering. "I honestly wasn't going to say anything, but there's an old Fire Nation ship stranded in the ice a few miles east of here…"
"And you think we could salvage what we need from that," Zuko finished for him.
"Maybe," Sokka said with a shrug, glancing away. Zuko looked back down at their most recent schematics, thinking. It could work...he and Iroh would be able to set up a makeshift forge, use their firebending to shape the old iron to suit their needs, if it was in good enough condition…
"Why weren't you going to say anything?" Zuko asked, wondering if the shipwreck was even more of a longshot than Sokka had made it out to be.
"My dad said the ship was off limits, for everyone," Sokka replied bluntly. His eyes flicked to the knife that Zuko now routinely wore at his hip, and there was a hint of something dark in his face. "But you're in charge now, right?"
Saying Yes, I am, would have felt childish. He didn't blame Sokka for still wanting to follow his father's orders, as inexplicable as many of Hakoda's choices seemed. A son should honor his father's wishes, even if he didn't understand...but a Water Tribe peasant should obey a Fire Nation prince, even a dishonored one.
Zuko collected the papers and got to his feet. "We'll check it out tomorrow," he told Sokka. "Go home."
Below deck, Zuko stowed the papers and sat on his bunk. He removed the knife from his belt and studied it once again. It was carved from a single piece of bone, with a notched hilt and slightly rounded blade. The blade was not very long, only about the length of his hand. It was etched with various animal forms on one side, and abstract symbols on the other. They weren't any characters Zuko recognized, and while the chief's knife and its significance to the tribe were mentioned in all the Water Tribe histories he had, none of them went into great detail about the carvings.
Zuko traced the symbols with his thumb. Most of them made use of curved lines, probably a reference to waves, or to the crescent moon. Only one, close to the hilt, was a pointed shape, open on one side. Zuko wondered if Hakoda knew what the carvings meant. He wondered if his father had gotten that information when the former chief had surrendered, if he would tell Zuko if he asked…
Uncle Iroh calling his name from outside drew Zuko out of his thoughts, and he went back above deck to discover the messenger hawk's perch once again occupied, by a smaller, darker bird than the one he had sent out. Iroh was unfastening the leather case from its leg, and Zuko eagerly snatched the letter from his hands once he had got it free.
He broke the seal without even looking at it, drank in the characters hungrily...then crumpled up the paper, set it on fire, and hurled it off the side of the ship into the dark waters. The letter was nothing more than a short missive from the Minister for Colonial Affairs, acknowledging receipt of his report and instructing him to address all further correspondence to his office directly. The Fire Lord was too busy to personally oversee all his governors.
"I take it that was not good news?" Uncle Iroh prompted gently.
Without a reply, Zuko stalked over to the hatch and jumped down into the hold, ignoring the ladder. Throwing open the trunk at the foot of his uncle's bunk, he pulled out the mirror and set it against the bulkhead. He glared at it for a moment, and his one-eyed reflection glared back.
"Prince Zuko?" came his uncle's concerned voice as Iroh made his way below deck far more carefully. But Zuko already had the bandages halfway off by the time Iroh's hand landed on his shoulder. "Are you certain you want to…" He trailed off, following Zuko's gaze to the mirror as the last strips of linen fell away.
A new face gazed back at them. On one side, it was almost unchanged, the same almond-shaped eye and arched brow, different only in the shaved scalp from the face he had always worn. But on the other side, the brow was gone, the eye fixed in a permanent squint, the ear deformed, and the flesh an angry red and hideously rippled. This was not the face of Prince Zuko, heir to the throne of the Fire Nation.
This was the face of Zuko, chief of the Southern Water Tribe.