The Princess of the Dragon Flats

by LizBee

Notes: With many thanks to NonElvis for her beta, and to Yiduiqie for looking over an early draft. This is a completed fic, but at 34,000 words, the single file was a bit much for to swallow. What can I say? Sometimes I just hate chapters. There will be more detailed notes at the end.

Warnings: Allusions to sexual slavery, child prostitution, non-coercive prostitution, drugs, alcohol and high-fat foods. Violence. Attempted noir. Politics.

That the law breaker is invariably sooner or later apprehended is probably the least challenged of extant myths. And yet the files of every detective bureau bulge with the records of unsolved mysteries and uncaught criminals.

Dashiell Hammett, 1923

We started to measure time by the Avatar's absence.

An hour. A day. A week.

We tracked her as far as the cliff, but none of us believed her journey ended there. For one thing, Naga was gone too, and however bleak Korra felt, she wouldn't have taken the dog with her.

Bolin suggested Katara start checking icebergs. Only Ikki laughed.

A month passed. A year.

Tenzin talked of the Spirit World reclaiming its lost daughter. No comfort to Tonraq and Senna, but the thought seemed to give Tenzin hope, and when we returned to Republic City he devoted his free time to old books and older stories.

And me -

The force welcomed me back, along with my fallen officers. People made accommodations for what they called my difficulties, and exclaimed about how well I was coping.

I lasted two months.

I didn't know what to do after that.

Tenzin wanted to sponsor me to join the Council, taking one of the new seats being created for people born and bred in the United Republic. It was a nice idea, but I had no stomach for politics. And I'd only ever known one way to serve the city.

Which brought me here, thirteen months after I lost my bending and the world lost its Avatar, to this dingy office in the Dragon Flats district, upstairs from an acupuncturist and next door to what was euphemistically called a massage parlour.

Home sweet home.

Asami knocked twice then let herself into my office.

"There's a Mrs Shiro to see you," she said. "Wealthy, well-dressed, middle-aged."

"Does she look like she'll pay?"

Asami shrugged. The wealthiest clients - and that was a low enough bar - were the slowest to pay their bills. Once a month we'd go through the accounts and sort out which needed polite reminders, which needed venomous polite reminders, and which required a personal visit from a burly earthbender.

"Tell you what, though," she added, "I'd bet money Shiro's not her real name."

"You can't afford to gamble on what I pay you."

She wrinkled her nose at me, tossed her hair and slipped out to send the client through.

Mrs Shiro shone.

There was little enough light in my office, but she seemed to radiate her own. Or maybe that was the gold thread that covered her red silk dress, fine embroidery that I was quite certain had been done by hand. The gold was echoed in her earrings and on her fingers. Her lipstick was precisely the same shade of red as her nail polish. Her face was oddly familiar, although I was sure I'd remember such a good-looking woman if I'd ever met her before. She was about my age, but at first glance she seemed much younger.

At second glance, I saw the lines around her mouth and eyes, and the loose threads on her sleeves where she had been plucking at that expensive embroidery.

Still, her voice, when she spoke, was perfectly controlled.

"My name is Akiko Shiro," she said. "My daughter is missing. Find her, bring her home, and I'll make you one of the richest women in this city."

I raised my eyebrows and didn't tell her that I used to be the richest woman in the city. Well, my mother was. At Asami's age I was even considered an eligible heiress, though for some reason men seemed to find me intimidating.

I found some fresh paper and a pen.

"Tell me about your daughter."

Shiro sank into a chair, her mask cracking a little more.

"She's nineteen. No, twenty. She's twenty. She came here to attend university-"

"From the Fire Nation?"

"Yes." She worried at a thread on her cuff. "I thought she was too young, but she insisted. It seemed all right for the first year."

"And then?"

"She hardly called us at all after Amon's revolution. Rarely wrote. We sent her money, she'd spend it, sometimes she called to ask for more. I thought this was normal."

"And when did she disappear?"

Shiro's attention was on her sleeves.

"Then we got a letter from the university, saying Megumi hasn't attended classes this semester. We called her, of course, but there was no answer. That was - that was last week."

"And you came to Republic City to find her." I felt a reluctant stirring of sympathy for Mrs Shiro.

"I just thought - I know people say the city is safer now, but there were the bombings last year, and all the crime, and-" She seemed to notice what she was doing at last. She reached into her bag and pulled out a cigarette case and an enamelled lighter. Her hands trembled slightly as she fitted her cigarette into its older and lit it. "Meg's allowance was more than generous. She could have rented the finest apartment in the city. I went to the address she gave me. It's little more than a slum!"

Her voice cracked.

I got up to make some tea.

When she was calm again, smoking her second cigarette, she said, "Maybe she - maybe she ran away. Escaped."

"Escaped from what?" I asked.

Shiro's face became closed.

"An arranged marriage? The family business?" I paused. "Her royal duties?"

A rueful smile touched "Shiro's" lips.

"I didn't fool you for a minute, did I?"

"Several minutes, actually. Took me a minute to recognise you."

"My father was Fire Lady Mai's younger brother."

"Lady Yumiko." I leaned back in my chair, relieved that the liar in my office was only royalty, and not, say, the disgruntled wife of someone I once threw in jail.

"You see why I can't go to the police," she said. "Sooner or later the newspapers would find out Meg's missing. I don't want a - a scandal. Or to scare her deeper into hiding."

Interesting, I thought, that she assumed her daughter had run away. Or maybe she didn't want to consider any other possibility, even privately.

"This is the key to her apartment." She slid an envelope across the table. "I haven't been in yet. I - couldn't."

"I understand."

"I'll pay whatever you want." She stood up, adjusting her dress. "My uncle always said we could trust you. He speaks very highly of you.

Her uncle being Fire Lord Zuko, whom I knew mostly as the shyest of my mother's friends.

"My secretary will explain my rates," I said. And, knowing Asami, would add on an extra fifty yuans per day, on the principle that anyone who owned that dress could afford it. "Where can I reach you?"

She gave me the number of an exclusive hotel near the park.

"When you find her," she said, "tell her - tell her we're not angry. We just want her to come home. We'll reward you generously if you bring her back."

I watched her sweep out of my office, the door closing behind her with a click. Then I shook out the envelope she had given me.

A key fell out, with a tag attached bearing an address only a few blocks away. And with it came five hundred yuans and a photograph of Megumi.

I looked at the mess - the valuable mess - on my desk. Carefully I picked up the key.

The metal was cold and silent in my hands. It was like holding a dead person's hand. Like closing my mother's eyes and letting her fingers fall from mine. Only it was the same refined earth it had always been. It was part of me that had died, like scar tissue atop damaged nerves.

I put the key in my pocket, swept up the money and put it in my safe, and got my coat.

Slum was too strong a word for Megumi's apartment, but it was close. She had made her home in a tenement near the river, the sort of place the new Councilman for the Dragon Flats borough had sworn to do away with. I felt a twinge of sympathy for the girl as I climbed the stairs to her door, but it quickly faded. She could have lived anywhere in the city, but the people around here didn't have a choice, and she had taken one of the few places they could afford.

And why? For experience? So she could go back to her friends in the Fire Nation and boast of having lived the life of a peasant for a few months? To shock and dismay her parents?

The key turned easily in the lock.

Instinctively I held my breath as I slipped into Megumi's apartment. Too many times I'd opened doors like this and found bodies on the other side. But the sparse room was empty, and smelled only of cat urine.

The cat itself wound around my ankles, wailing piteously. It was a grey, mangy old thing with a torn ear, and terribly thin.

"Fine," I said.

The kitchenette consisted of a small icebox, a couple of hot plates, a bench and a sink. In one corner lay a bag of dried fish, its contents spilling out of the hole the cat had clawed. It wasn't exactly starving, then, but it fell on the bowl of tap water I offered, purring even as it drank. The cat was so thirsty that for a moment it even ignored the bowl of canned fish that followed.

I watched it eat, thinking that a girl who adopted a stray cat was unlikely to abandon it.

Then I went to work.

Her furniture was cheap, and probably came with the apartment, but the futon, when I drew it from its chest, was of the highest quality, and the blankets were almost new. Poor little rich girl drew the line at bedbugs, I guessed.

I moved to her drawers. Most of the clothes were unremarkable, the things you could buy off the rack in stores. There were a few dresses that looked scandalous to my eyes, although I suspected Asami would merely call them trashy. At the very back, folded in tissue paper, were formal robes, embroidered silk like her mother wore, but in newer styles.

There was jewellery, too, kept in a lacquered puzzle box. The upper layer held showy costume jewellery, along with some cheap cosmetics, but the concealed inner layer contained a few expensive pieces. Earrings, a necklace, the sort of thing wealthy Fire Nation families gave their daughters when they came of age. And, wrapped in silk, a royal hairpiece.

Everything else I returned, but the hairpiece went into my inner pocket. Lady Yumiko would want that back. I was already beginning to suspect it would be the only thing I could give her.

The cat nuzzled my hand. I petted it, and it pushed itself against my fingers, purring, demanding that I scratch it. For a few seconds it seemed like the happiest animal in the world. Then it sank its teeth into my wrist.

I swore. At length.

The cat curled up on the futon and looked unrepentant.

Finally I turned to the most promising thing in the room: Megumi's desk. It was covered in papers, most of them torn from magazines and newspapers. Lots of pictures of pro-benders. Underneath the initial layer of mess was a scrapbook. Inside were more articles about pro-bending, pictures of pro-bending teams, even a crumpled play sheet. One team kept coming up. The Wolfbats.

The last picture in the scrapbook was a photograph. There were the Wolfbats again, preening in the centre, and clustered around them was a group of beautiful girls.

Second from the left was Megumi.

I recognised her from Lady Yumiko's photograph, although this picture was more recent. Megumi had a long face with a sharp chin and generous mouth. She bore a passing resemblance to Fire Lady Mai, although that might have been the effect of her short, blunt bangs. If I hadn't known they were related, I might not have noticed.

Pro-bending had been shut down since the revolution. The arena had barely been repaired after Amon's attack when it was bombed by his remaining disciples. That was four months ago; repairs were ongoing. This photograph dated back to before the finals, when Tahno and his team-mates were arrogant sons-of-bitches and Megumi was a wealthy foreign student attending university.

I should have asked her mother if she was a bender.

I flipped through the book again, pausing for a second on a photo of Korra with her teammates. They looked like children.

Something fell out as I turned the page.

It was a matchbook, the kind that nightclubs gave to patrons. Empty, it was nothing more than a bit of folded cardboard inscribed on the front with the characters 尊嚴. Sanctity. Dignity. Honour. An appropriate choice for a Fire Nation noblewoman, I thought, amused, and went to throw the matchbook on the desk.

I stopped.

I knew Sanctity.

Oh, Megumi, you stupid, stupid girl.

The rest of my search was cursory. I found some meditation candles, the kind that were almost exclusively used by firebenders, but there was no way to tell when they had last been lit. There were a few books, mostly university texts on politics, history and law. Fitting enough for her position, but then there were the pamphlets. Equalist propaganda. Calls for economic warfare. A slightly hysterical denunciation of Hiroshi Sato - published before anyone knew he was an Equalist. Similar texts denounced other industrialists and plutocrats: Varrick, Raiko, the Shan family of Ba Sing Se, the Wei family of the Fire Nation.

I leaned back, ignoring the cat's cries for attention, and tried to reconcile Megumi the noblewoman with Megumi the revolutionary student, with Megumi the sports fan, with Megumi the - what? The girl who painted her face and wore a flimsy dress to go dancing at nightclubs? The girl who took in an ugly, anti-social stray cat, then vanished and left it to starve?

The royal hairpiece lay heavy in my pocket.

Slowly I climbed to my feet. My back ached, and my head. The cat meowed at me, clawing at my boots.

"Fine," I said.

"What's that?" Asami asked, poking at the basket I had just dumped on her desk.

"The Fire Lord's cousin's cat. Watch out. He bites."

"But he looks so - ow!" Too late, Asami ripped her hand away, sucking on her finger. The cat climbed nonchalantly out of its basket and started washing itself.

"That's not a cat," Asami said as she fussed about with disinfectant, "it's a weapon."

"I like it."

"You would."

In the interests of employee relations, I decided not to ask her to clarify.

Instead, I said, "You up for some overtime tonight?"

She perked up. "A stake-out?"

"You could call it that." I passed her the empty matchbook. "I'll pick you up at ten. Wear something pretty."

"Beifong." Asami ran a hand over her carefully waved hair and eyed my battered old car with distaste.

"Sato. You look good."

I wanted to put a blanket around her shoulders and send her home, but that was probably the effect she was going for. Her qipao was slit to her thighs, and she wobbled a bit on her high heels. With her hair in a knot at the base of her neck and heavier make-up than usual, she looked like a sheltered rich girl taking her first steps into the underworld. Exactly what I needed, and close enough to her true self that no one would doubt it, but I still felt like a heel for bringing her into this.

"Nice suit," she said as we drove. "Am I your date tonight?"

"People know me," I said, straightening my cravat. "But people find pretty girls disarming for some reason."

"Disarming. I can do that." She fluttered her eyelashes at me, looking about as helpless as a platypus bear.

"Be careful, though," I warned her. "I need you to watch and listen."

"For what?"

Anything that feels wrong, I wanted to say, but in a place like Sanctity that didn't exactly narrow the list.

It was an underworld institution, if you could use that word about a place that changed venues and names every couple of years. The owner was a man named Pockmarked Huang, although he spent enough time in jail that his wife handled most of the day to day business. If you wanted high-proof baijiu and a dance with a pretty girl, you went to Sanctity. If you wanted opium or hashish, you could find it there. If you wanted weapons, women, hired killers, someone in Sanctity would be able to provide them for you. Pockmarked Huang took his cut, turned a blind eye, and everyone went home happy.

Except, of course, the women. And the dead.

When I was a cop, we raided the place as often as we could, sometimes every few months. Huang would go to prison, his wife would curse us, and within weeks there'd be a new hot nightclub in town.

Asami took all this in, then said, "And you think they'll let you in? Chief?"

"Mrs Huang hates my guts, but her husband likes me. Says I remind him of his sister." I parked on a quiet street a couple of blocks away and went round to open Asami's door. "She's onto her third husband and sixth kid, but he says it's a compliment."

Asami tucked her arm through mine.

"Well," she said, "I could have become an accountant."

"That's the spirit."

The bouncer was hostile - four years since I arrested him, but apparently he held onto his grudges - but he smirked when he saw Asami and waved us through.

Sanctity was a dark cave of a place. Its main source of illumination was old-fashioned crystal lanterns that cast a sickly greenish glow but left faces in shadow. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, and I had to take shallow breaths to keep from coughing. Heads turned as we passed tables, men and a few women taking second and third glances at the beautiful girl on my arm. I felt Asami draw a little closer to my side.

"Easy, Sato," I murmured.

"I feel like a piece of meat."

"I know." I squeezed her hand.

"Did Megumi come here alone?"

"I don't know."

The waiter led us to a table, and I ordered drinks, warm sake for myself, a vile mixture of pomegranate and soju for Asami, who looked at the waiter with interest but said little. When the drinks arrived, I gave the waiter a generous tip and told him to scram.

When we were alone in our dark little corner, Asami sipped her drink and finally relaxed a little.

"You've done this before?"

"A few times," I admitted. "When I was younger, less recognisable. Once I came off patrol, middle of summer, stinking inside my armour, and my lieutenant threw a dress at me and told me to try for sexy if I couldn't manage pretty. Right in front of my mom. I wanted to die."

"Was she mad?"

"Are you kidding? She told the story at every family dinner for months, until Tenzin and I were ready to kill her."

"You must miss her."

"Sometimes." When I woke up in the middle of the night and the earth was silent. As a kid, when I had nightmares, she told me to put my hand on the wall and listen to the heartbeats of all the people in the world. I never felt alone until I woke up and my bending was gone.

I sipped my sake.

"I forgot what this is like," I said. "The way they look at you, I mean. I'd have asked one of the boys, but-"

"Bringing Bolin here would be like bringing a puppy to an abattoir."

"And Mako is so-"

"Intense," said Asami. Wasn't quite what I was going for, but it worked. "At least I know you won't try to paw me at the end of the night."

"I was raised to be a gentleman," I told her.

"Why would Megumi come to a place like this?" Asami asked.

"Why did you race cars?"

"You think she wanted a thrill?"

"Maybe. I don't know." I ran my fingers around the rim of my cup. "I keep asking myself, why would a firebender need matches?"

"Oh."

I leaned back in my chair, surveying the room.

"See the woman in blue?" I asked.

"With the beads in her hair?"

"That's Arnaluk. I sent her to jail for selling girls in her courtesan house."

"Isn't that what a courtesan house is for?"

"These girls were twelve. Men will pay a premium for virgins. A young enough girl and a bit of picken blood, you can make a lot of money. Provided you have no conscience."

Asami's eyes were wide.

"What happened to the men? Her clients?"

"She didn't exactly keep records."

"Oh."

"You could still become an accountant."

Her smile was slightly wobbly, and didn't meet her eyes.

"Chief Beifong." Pockmarked Huang placed another drink before me. "You honour us." His gaze flicked to Asami. "Miss Sato."

"Huang."

"I was so sorry to hear of your retirement." He sat down. "If I'd known you were going into the private sector, I'd have offered you a place running security here."

"Your wife wouldn't stand for it."

"Maybe if I had you on my payroll, I'd spend less time in prison and more time running my businesses."

"Or the opposite."

Huang's smile faded.

"You're making my other patrons nervous," he said, and his voice was now cold.

I pulled the photograph of Megumi out of my jacket pocket. "You know her?"

He hesitated for a moment, but finally said, "Meg. Yes, I knew her. She was a taxi dancer."

"A what?" Asami blurted.

"A taxi dancer." Huang's manner became more friendly. He waved a hand at the dance floor. "Some men are more accustomed to conducting business than charming dance partners. So I … combined the two."

"Men … pay to dance?" Asami sounded unimpressed.

"It's entirely legal," said Huang. "The ladies are as much my employees as the waiters or the bouncers. Even Lin can't find anything objectionable in the arrangement."

I raised my eyebrows.

"Well," he said, "I can't control what the girls do in their own time. If a lady makes her own private arrangements, that's no business of mine."

"He still takes a cut, though," I told Asami.

"I have an obligation to see that my employees are safe," said Huang sanctimoniously.

"Did Meg make her own private arrangements?" Asami asked.

"No. Never."

"And you're quite sure about that?" I said.

"Absolutely." Huang held the picture up to the light. "She was a popular dancer because she was refined, a bit classy. Not gutter trash pretending to be a lady. But she was distant. Like you, Lin. I always had the impression she secretly despised all of us." He put the picture down. "Of course, some men liked that. But I haven't seen her for a few weeks."

"You didn't check she was okay?" asked Asami.

"I have a lot of employees, Miss Sato."

"You don't care about their safety?"

"Decency," said Huang, "can only go so far. Like my time." He stood up. "Enjoy your evening, ladies. On the house."

"Wait," I called as he turned away. "Was Meg a bender?"

"Not anymore."

"Did she have any regular clients?"

"No," snapped Huang, but his gaze flicked over to another table. "Good night, Lin."

"He was lying, right?" Asami said over my shoulder.

"Of course." I glanced at the table he had been watching, then turned away from them. I whispered in Asami's ear, "Can you see the man with the earring?"

"No, I - wait. Yes."

"He's called Diamond Deng. He makes Pockmarked Huang look small-time. When Amon took out the bending triads, Deng moved in and took over."

"How did Amon miss him?"

"Deng's not a bender. We were pretty sure he was helping your father smuggle Amon's weapons into the city."

"He's an Equalist?"

"An opportunist. The weapons are starting to turn up in Ba Sing Se and Omashu."

"Who's the man with - oh."

I turned back, more openly this time, following the sound of raised voices.

"You can't control every business in this city, Deng. It's getting a bit pathetic."

As Deng's companion stood up, I caught a glimpse of a once-handsome face marred by deep, dramatic scars.

"Isn't that-"

"Yes." I stood up. "Time to go."

It had rained while we were inside, so the streets were almost empty.

"Councilman Liu," I called.

He turned back, the streetlight throwing his scars into sharp relief. A glass bottle had been smashed over his cheek when he was young, and one of Diamond Deng's underworld predecessors had opened his face from cheekbone to chin with a razor. He was a few years older than me, his hair almost entirely grey, but his scars were deeper than the lines on his face. I wished I could have seen the other Councillors' reactions when Tenzin sponsored him to represent the Dragon Flats borough.

But Liu had a reputation for straight dealing. He never bothered to hide his early association with the Equalists, just as he couldn't conceal his violent past or his common accent. He was said to be incorruptible, not least because the people he represented would tear him from limb to limb if he didn't meet their expectations. But the flipside was that he was untouchable, because the borough would destroy anyone who attempted to harm him.

Or so the theory went. I'd only seen him in passing before. And distant impressions didn't convey the man's charisma, nor the light in his bright green eyes.

"Councilman," I said, straightening my spine. "I'm Lin Beifong-"

"Yes," he said, "I know." He looked wary, maybe expecting me to ask a favour.

"You probably don't need me to warn you about Diamond Deng," I said.

"He's an old adversary," said Liu, a rueful smile touching his lips. "But I appreciate the thought." He bowed at Asami. "Miss Sato. You wouldn't know me, but I worked in your dad's factories for a decade."

She looked down, her jaw tight.

"It was a good job. Lots of us depended on that work. I hope that when the factory reopens, those people will be able to go back to work."

Hiroshi's assets had been confiscated by the city as compensation for the damage his machines had wrought. Over a year later, the factories still hadn't reopened, caught between government inexperience and Hiroshi's powerful lawyers. One of Liu's political obsessions, I remembered Tenzin telling me, was making Future Industries a thriving business again.

"About Deng," I said.

"He's quickly advancing from bribery to veiled threats. But that's a matter for the police, surely." His gaze took in my civilian suit, though he looked more curious than dismissive.

"I'm searching for a missing woman who may have been associated with him. Do you know-"

He took the photo from my hand and held it up to the light, frowning. There was a flicker of recognition in his eyes.

"She's familiar," he admitted, "but I can't place her. I've certainly never seen her with Deng, but I don't actually know him that well anymore." There was that self-deprecating smile again. "We're not as close as he'd like." He returned to the photo. "If she's mixed up with Deng, she's probably in trouble. He has a bad reputation with women."

"I know."

"I feel like I've seen her somewhere."

"You've probably seen her second cousin, General Iroh."

Liu looked up sharply.

"Though you can keep that to yourself," I added. "Councilman."

"You should come by City Hall tomorrow evening," he said. "I've heard a lot about Deng's women over the years. If he's finally tangled with a girl from the wrong family, I want to be there when he goes down." He returned the photo. "Come by at seven," he said. "I usually grab a bite to eat around then, and I'm tired of eating noodles alone."

He tipped his hat to us and walked on, a new spring in his step.

"Maybe you should wear something pretty," said Asami.

Asami grew quiet as we drove home. As I was dropping her off she said, "How can you deal with such terrible things, and not be angry all the time?"

I was tempted to point out that I was angry all the time, or at least naturally bad-tempered. But the question deserved a proper answer.

All I could say was, "I was a cop for thirty years, Asami. If I couldn't compartmentalise, I'd have gone crazy."