Chapter Notes: I totally made up Shinsotsu, the Shinchi Kingdom, the rulers thereof - pretty much everything about the geography in here, in other words. As far as I know, there's pretty much nothing about it in canon, so I'm not actively contradicting anything (except the Earth Kingdom's singular status, that is). Aside from that, all I have to say is: yay Suki!

Chapter Four: Shinsotsu (Part 1)

They sped out of the bay like they were flying, and the steamship, which had nearly vanished around the island in the hurry to get away from Katara's cyclone, was nowhere near catching up; it had fallen back to the far horizon by the time the sun set. But the Avatar State had taken its toll, and Katara slept until Suki shook her awake the next morning.

It took Katara a moment to pry her eyes open enough to see Suki leaning over her, still in her green battle dress, but with her face wiped clean of paint, and wearing an apologetic expression. "I figured it was best not to try to give you a watch last night," she said, sympathetic, "but you've been sleeping for a pretty long time, and - well, the ship's catching up again. The current's been pretty good so far, but us paddling just isn't going to cut it."

Katara felt wretched, groggy and cramped; there was enough space in the canoe for two people to sleep while one sat watch, but only just barely, and it was pure luck that their fourth passenger was intangible, and didn't need to be inside the canoe to keep up with it. But when she looked over her shoulder, past the stern, she could see that Suki was right: the Fire Nation ship was inching closer, the sky to the southwest smudged with coal smoke.

It felt like she bent for weeks, though it was only a few days; she took short breaks to sleep, but Suki and Sokka paddling just wasn't fast enough to keep them away from the ship. To make matters worse, on the fourth day out from Kyoshi Island, they discovered that Sokka had finished off the last of their food when he'd eaten at the beginning of his watch.

"I was hungry," he protested. "I'm a growing boy, okay? Look, here's me, ready and willing to replace it," and he dug his fishing spear out from where it had settled at the bottom of the canoe.

Suki was sitting in the middle, which was good, because otherwise Katara might have thrown herself across the canoe and strangled him. "Somehow I think we probably shouldn't take the time to stop and fish," Suki said, dry. She had evidently taken over map duties from Sokka while Katara had been sleeping, and now she was peering down at the southern continent, eyes flicking from city to city. "Besides, docking in an Earth Kingdom harbor will keep that ship off our backs for a while - they won't dare follow us in, not when they're all by themselves."

Katara felt like she'd spent the past three days looking over her shoulder, but she couldn't help but look again, and thought for a moment that she might cry just from exhaustion and frustration. She had been bending the canoe forward as fast as she could, and for longer than she had ever bent anything before, and it still wasn't enough; the steamship had always crept just a little bit closer every time she checked, and, true to form, it was closer this time, too.

She turned back around at the touch of Suki's hand on her shoulder, and found Suki giving her a understanding, almost fond look. "Even Avatars get tired," Suki said quietly, and then smiled. "Besides, if you could do everything by yourself, there wouldn't have been any reason to ask me to come along." She glanced down at the map again, and said, "Shinsotsu's our best bet, I think - east," and she pointed off to the right, along the faint thin blur of land in the distance. "We've been following the edge of this peninsula for days; we should be able to get to the city by tonight."

They did get to the harbor soon after nightfall, and a good thing it was, too; the Fire Nation ship kept on pulling steadily closer as the sun sank. The early evening was very clear, and they could see Shinsotsu from miles away. The lighthouse was visible first, as a small spot of light low against the darkening sky, and it probably saved their lives; the ship was undoubtedly within catapult range by then, but didn't attack, evidently trying to avoid catching the attention of Shinsotsu's navy.

The wind picked up as the sky darkened, and it would have been a relief to get inside the arms of the harbor even if the steamship hadn't been following them, just to escape the choppy water.

"Ha-ha," Sokka said, punching a fist into the air.

Katara let her arms drop with a sigh, feeling the water slide out of her grip and, for once, not sorry to let it go. "Yeah, you win. Now start paddling."

.*.

They decided to avoid the actual docks, partly because none of them knew how to dock a boat; Manamota had not had any docks, Aang had never had to land anything but a sky bison, and the ice shelves near the village were the closest Katara and Sokka had ever come. Katara also figured it couldn't hurt to avoid attention as much as possible: another crowd of people eager to meet the Avatar might give the Fire Nation soldiers following them a chance to sneak into the city.

Shinsotsu and its harbor were surrounded by forests, which was good; Suki steered them off to one side of the docks, and they carried the canoe up over the rocky shore and under the trees.

It didn't occur to Katara that there could be other good reasons to keep a low profile until they packed up and started heading for the city. But barely ten minutes into the walk, Suki, in the front, came to a sudden stop, throwing a hand out to keep Sokka from walking blithely on past. "Quiet," she whispered sharply, and sank down into a crouch, yanking Sokka down beside her. Katara blinked, and then dropped; she hadn't noticed anything amiss, but then she'd just finished thoroughly tiring herself out for four days straight.

Suki led them forward, staying low to the ground the whole way. It must have rained not long ago: the ground was soft, which was a nice stroke of luck. Katara was too exhausted to keep track of where she was putting her feet, but the twigs she kept stepping on just sank into the dirt instead of cracking.

"There," Suki murmured, after another minute or two of stealth, and reached back to pull Katara forward until she was looking through the same gap in the undergrowth that Suki was.

Fire Nation soldiers - there was no mistaking it. A whole battalion, unless Katara was seeing double; for a moment, she was half-ready to cry again, thinking the ship had somehow, impossibly, beaten them here even after those four horrible days, but then logic reasserted itself. The ship had fallen back before they'd gotten anywhere near the harbor. This had to be a whole new set of soldiers.

Sokka was frowning through the branches, looking startled and dismayed; but Suki seemed far less surprised.

"I'd hoped they hadn't gotten this far," she muttered, but she sounded more resigned than anything.

"This far?" Sokka hissed. "How have they gotten anywhere near here? The map-"

"Is old," Suki reminded him gently. "The cities are all in about the right place, but - when did you get that thing, anyway? It's only got the three oldest Fire Nation colonies on it. The front's moved just a bit since then," and Suki lifted a hand to convey the purported smallness of the change with thumb and forefinger, voice gone dry and amused.

Katara glanced at Sokka, who was looking back at her with wide eyes. She'd known, of course, that things had changed since the map had been made - had probably changed even in the relatively few years since Father and the other Southern Water Tribe warriors had sailed away. And she'd known she wasn't going to be able to avoid the war, not when she was the one who was supposed to end it. But she had imagined a few peaceful, studious years learning to be the Avatar first; and, more importantly, a relatively straightforward trip to the places she'd have to go to do it. And now it was becoming abundantly clear that "straightforward" was not going to be the right word for this journey.

They managed to skirt around the battalion successfully, though there was one tense moment when Katara's braid got snagged on a branch; she managed not to shout at the sudden harsh yank, but the jerk of motion caught one soldier's eye, and she had to freeze in place for a long moment, hair still caught, before the soldier decided she'd been imagining things.

"Okay, go," Sokka whispered behind her when he had unhooked her hair from the twig, and they crept past the battalion and out onto the road to Shinsotsu with no further close calls.

"We'll be safe when we get to Shinsotsu," Suki assured them. "The Fire Nation does patrols, reconnaissance, that sort of thing, but they haven't actually captured much territory in this area - at least, not that I've heard."

"... How much do you hear, in Manamota?" Sokka asked, skeptical.

Suki pursed her lips and gave him a flat look. "Enough," she said. "There are Warriors of Kyoshi on all the islands, not just Kyoshi Island; and the fishing trade brings us a fair amount of news, too."

Sokka raised his hands defensively. "Okay, okay, just checking. I mean, no matter how little you know, you know more than we do."

"Very true," Suki said equably, and set off down the road.

.*.

Shinsotsu was walled, and rather impressively so; it was relatively easy to get good walls when you had Earthbenders around to build them, and the Earth Kingdoms were famous for their walled cities. The most famous was Ba Sing Se - Shinsotsu had nothing like that kind of scale, of course, but it was certainly better than anything Katara had managed to put up by herself with ice at home.

They had to pass a guard to get through the gate, and Katara worried briefly that he would demand a reason why they were entering the city; somehow she suspected that "hiding from a Fire Nation warship that's probably lurking just outside the harbor" wouldn't go over very well. She was trying to compose a decent-sounding lie about visiting relatives that would also explain the obviously Water Tribe clothes when they got to the front of the line, and the guard took one look at Suki and grinned.

"A Warrior of Kyoshi, aren't you?" he said. "Don't often see you people without the paint."

"Well, I'm not planning to kill anybody today," Suki said, tone matter-of-fact.

The guard chuckled. "Name's Ryo," he said. "I've got a second cousin down in Namiya; one of her aunts on the other side of the family is in the order down there."

"Well, the next time you get in touch, give her my greetings from Kyoshi Island," Suki said.

"The island itself," Ryo said, sounding moderately awed.

"The village itself," Suki admitted. "I pass her house every day on the way to the training hall."

Ryo shook his head, evidently temporarily speechless; Katara couldn't help but wonder what he'd do if he knew another Avatar was standing right in front of him. "Well, by all means, go on in," he said at last, motioning toward the open gate. "You and your friends - and enjoy your stay."

"I'm sure we will," Suki said, beaming beatifically.


"Now this is the life," Sokka said happily, cramming another couple hunks of rice into his mouth as soon as the last word was out of the way.

Suki laughed, but had to admit that he was at least a little bit right. Before they'd gotten here, the closest Suki had ever come to a proper city was occasional visits to other islands; Kyoshi Island was ruled by the mayor of Kyotsu, on the eastern side of the island, and that was really more of a town.

But Shinsotsu was a genuine city. The market alone had probably been the size of the whole of Kyotsu, and they had wandered it for hours. Suki now had several new sets of clothes - "Now I'll have something to wear when I'm washing my battle robes," she had said, satisfied, when they'd gotten them, and Sokka had just about choked - and Katara and Sokka each had a few green things, and a few blue things brought up from the islands that lacked the white accents of Water Tribe clothes. Katara had paid for most of it, insisting that Suki wouldn't have to be buying anything at all if they hadn't left in such a rush; luckily for her, the Earth Kingdoms had to constantly adjust to changing currencies between the lot of them, and the proprietors were willing to take her money even though it was old and odd-shaped.

And now they were sitting on a roof in the business district, eating hot rice and soup and watching the sun set over the ocean. There was nobody in the building now, of course - they were close enough to the city wall to be able to look over it, and the businesses that were open after sundown were bound to be closer to the middle of the city.

Katara set her bowl down and sighed, and then glanced over to the empty air on the side of her where Suki wasn't. "You've been awfully quiet," she said to it, holding up one finger back in Suki's direction.

Suki blinked, and then, truly desperate, turned to Sokka for guidance.

He was grimacing a little, and leaned over to murmur in her ear, "Remember that second thing I never got a chance to tell you?"

"If it was that the new Avatar is crazy," Suki said doubtfully, "I think you probably should have made a bigger effort to squeeze it in somewhere."

Sokka sighed, and glanced past Suki to where Katara was gently saying, "It is?" to nothing at all. "I - don't know what to tell you. She says the last Avatar's following her around - helping her out, teaching her things. And she ... talks to him sometimes, and then tells me things-" Sokka made a small gesture of confusion with both hands. "They sound true; I don't know, I've got no way to check."

"Oh," Katara was saying, looking at the air sympathetically.

Suki took a deep breath, and made herself think about it for a moment. She'd seen Katara touch some part of Kyoshi, back at home; was another Avatar speaking to her really all that ridiculous?

"He's been here before," Katara said, and it took Suki a second to realize she was talking to them again. "Aang, I mean," she clarified, obviously having noticed Suki's confusion. "The last Avatar; he says it's changed a lot."

"Well, it's been at least a hundred years since the last time he saw it," Sokka said, "so I can't say I'm surprised."

"... It has?" Suki said. "I thought you said he was the last Avatar - he must have been an Airbender. If he died in the massacre, then why has it taken so long for another Avatar-" She stopped: Katara was grimacing and shaking her head, ever so minutely. "Oh - uh, he can see me, right?" Suki asked. "And hear me?"

Katara nodded.

Suki followed her glance into the seemingly empty air next to her, and said, "I'm sorry," as sincerely as she could given that she was talking to - well, what looked to her, at least, like nothingness. "That was - thoughtless of me."

"Oh, great; now you're going to start doing it, too," Sokka grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Suki shot him a look, and then glanced back to where this Avatar Aang was purportedly sitting - and then past it, to a sudden motion beyond the wall. Light from the setting sun, she told herself, except there was nothing in the forest for it to reflect off like that - or there shouldn't have been, at least. She reached out to touch Katara's elbow, and pointed. "Look."


Katara looked, and at first, she saw nothing, still reeling a little bit from the sudden zig-zag in conversation. Aang had been quiet all day, and Katara had been too tired to think much of it; now, though, when she finally had a chance to sit back and relax, belly full, knowing she'd sleep somewhere more comfortable than a canoe tonight, she had asked him about it, and stumbled yet again into sensitive territory. She kept forgetting that Aang had spent relatively little time aware during the hundred years it had been since he'd gone out of the world, especially since some of that time had been in the spirit world; to him, it had to feel like it had been only a few years, relatively speaking, since the last time he'd seen Shinsotsu, and yet it had changed enormously.

She had also forgotten that they had never told Suki about Aang. He had been unobtrusive during their flight from Kyoshi Island, and Katara had been concentrating so hard on speeding up the canoe that she probably wouldn't have paid much attention even if he had tried to talk to her, so it hadn't come up.

And now they hadn't even gotten to finish that conversation, because there was something in the trees outside the city wall that Suki evidently found interesting.

Katara let her gaze go uncentered, relaxed, taking in as much area as possible; she knew any sudden movement would catch her eye, and a moment later, it did.

"That?" Katara said.

Suki nodded. "Somebody in the woods, I'd say," she said, and then shifted her arm, pointing further along the wall. "And there's more of them - there, and there, at the very least."

"Man, we have the worst luck ever," Sokka said. "I'll bet you anything it's that battalion from this morning."

Suki looked troubled. "If they're not just patrolling - if they're scouting the walls to plan an attack-" She paused speculatively. "I'd hate to be disrespectful of the - uh, other Avatar, but could he get down there?"

"Wait, really?" Sokka said, eyebrows practically up to his hairline. "Seriously? Our plan is to send Katara's invisible dead friend to check it out for us?"

"Well, if he's not real, then we really don't have to worry about him being seen," Katara snapped, a little bit stung. She knew she'd been asking him to believe a lot of stuff he couldn't be sure of, but she'd thought he was starting to get used to Aang; evidently, she'd been wrong.

"Hey, come on, I didn't mean it like that," Sokka said, and made a big show of looking in approximately Aang's direction. "I believe in you, invisible guy."

"Thanks," Aang said wryly, from Katara's other side.

"He says thanks," Katara passed along, and then looked at Aang. He'd lost the worst of the somber look he'd been wearing when he'd told her about Shinsotsu, though he wasn't quite smiling yet. "What do you think?"

"Looking around for a minute? I think I can handle it," Aang said, and there was the smile. "Back in no time," and he drifted off the roof, over the next two buildings, and through the wall.

.*.

It took about two minutes for Aang to get back; Katara couldn't help but fill them by imagining all the terrible things the Fire Nation soldiers could be doing right that moment, which made it a bit anticlimactic when Aang floated back through the wall and shouted, "Suki's right, they're scouting the wall." He drifted closer, close enough for Katara to see the troubled look on his face clearly. "They're planning an assault for tomorrow morning - I heard two of them talking about it."

Suki looked at her questioningly, evidently having noticed her sudden turn to the side, and Katara nodded in response. "You were right," she said. "We've got to do something." Sokka was making a face, and she frowned at him. "We have to - I know we were trying to avoid attention, but we can't let this place get attacked because of it."

"No, no, I know," Sokka sighed. "Just - why is it always us?"

"Because we're lucky that way," Suki said, smiling.

.*.

Shinsotsu was the capital city of the Shinchi Kingdom; like almost all the other capital cities in the Earth Kingdoms, there was a walled palace near the city center. A walled palace with lots of guards.

"Now might be a good time to bust out the Avatar thing," Sokka suggested, but Katara shook her head.

"How?" she said. "I can't just do the glowing bit on command - and I think it might be a bad idea to do that inside, anyway. And I don't think I'll be able to impress them with my knowledge of past Avatars; this isn't Kyoshi Island, it's been a long time since there was an Avatar from around here." At least a couple thousand years, in point of fact: when Katara let her thoughts wander, she started looking at the city through the eyes of a young man in green who called himself Gaoshun and was bewildered by the lack of open plains where they were standing.

"Fine, fine," Sokka said, "we can be nobodies."

The palace was enormous; the tallest towers were at least as tall as the city lighthouse, curving rooftips dark against the sunset sky, and the courtyards and gardens were clearly huge, since the closest hall was quite a ways away. There were guards stationed all around the wall, and at least a dozen at the main gate.

"We need to speak to the king and queen," Suki said, authoritative, before the guards even had a chance to demand anything. Katara had never been so glad that she had thought to ask Suki to join them as she was at that moment; she and Sokka had never been to a city before, let alone a palace, and neither of them would ever have dared be so insistent.

"Petitioning hours are over," the closest guard said dismissively. "Come back some other time."

"It's urgent," Suki said. "Can't we just-"

The guard gave her a flat look from underneath his helmet. "Recklessly assume whatever's on your mind is more important than anything bothering everybody else who has to wait until tomorrow? You can, but I wouldn't advise it."

Katara grimaced. It was more important, but she was starting to suspect that it wouldn't help to tell him so now; people had probably made up far more impressive lies than "the Fire Nation's going to attack tomorrow" in an attempt to get an audience. "Please," she said.

Clearly, something of her desperation must have come across; the guard stared at her, and then pursed his lips. "There are petitioners' rooms in the palace complex," he said after a moment. "For people who have to travel from the outskirts of the kingdom. If you were willing to wait to speak to them, you could stay there, and you'd get one of the first slots tomorrow morning."

Katara glanced at Suki, and saw the same dismay she was sure was on her own face mirrored on Suki's. The first slot tomorrow morning might be early enough; but then again, it might not, and the city guard would need some time, once they'd been warned, to get into position.

"Okay," Sokka said brightly.

Katara whipped her head around to stare at him. "Sokka-"

He grinned. "The petitioners' rooms will be just fine," he continued, and then bowed to the guard. "Thank you so much for helping us."

The guard's name turned out to be Yutan; he led them through the gate and across the enormous stone courtyard to a set of small buildings off to the side. "Petitioners' quarters," he said. "Someone will come get you tomorrow morning."

Katara waited until they had gotten inside and closed the door to turn to Sokka. "What was that?"

"I would be happy to explain," Sokka said, beaming. "Where are the king and queen? Inside the palace. Where were we, before I executed my genius move? Outside the palace. Where are we now, post-genius move?"

"Inside the palace," Katara admitted, unable to help smiling a little. "All right, fine, it worked. Now what do we do?"

"... I hadn't really gotten that far yet," Sokka said.


"You do realize that you'll have to admit that he exists, if this works," Suki whispered to Sokka.

They had changed into their new Earth Kingdom clothes - or, in Suki's case, had traded Kyoshi-style battle robes for more casual dress - so as to blend in a little better, and now they were outside the petitioners' quarters, pressed against the wall and waiting for a whistling guard to pass. Katara was a few feet down, and waiting for the invisible Avatar Aang to tell her when the way was clear.

It had been Katara's idea to use Aang as a lookout to sneak into the actual palace, and Sokka had been unable to argue with the logic of using an undetectable person as their scout. Or, at least, he'd been unable to argue with it without sounding like he thought Aang didn't exist, which wouldn't have gone over well - not ever, and especially not after he'd insisted the opposite just that afternoon.

Sokka sighed. "Yeah, yeah," he murmured back, rolling his eyes. He hesitated afterward, and Suki saw the telltale signs that he was about to say something serious in the tightness around his eyes and the nervous slant of his mouth. "It's not that I think she's lying," he said slowly, "it's - just so hard to believe, you know? I keep forgetting that it's-" and Suki could tell he was fighting not to stick supposedly in there anywhere, "-true."

"Well, after this, you won't have to believe," Suki said practically. "You'll know, one way or the other."

Sokka looked at her, expression unreadable; but then Katara waved them forward, so Suki had no chance to ask what he was thinking.

They crept around the rest of the petitioners' rooms, and then sprinted across a small gap to the cover of a little stand of trees while the nearest guard had her head turned away so that she could scratch her neck. Sokka gave Suki a flat look over his shoulder; she nobly resisted the urge to smirk at him. One point to Aang.

They inched closer to the main palace building, and then had to wait for a while behind the corner of another wall while Aang went to figure out what entrance would be best. Katara had to be getting sick of relaying his every movement back to the two of them, but she did it anyway. Then they all hushed up; there must have been a shift change or something, because several groups of guards went by in as many minutes, in both directions.

Aang must have come back at some point, because the moment the last guard was out of earshot, Katara turned to them and whispered, "Servants' entrance - around the corner, past the big peach tree."

Katara yanked them down once, a moment before a guard turned his head and yelled to someone across the courtyard, and Suki couldn't resist darting a quick glance at Sokka: he was looking at Katara, who was herself watching the guard, with an expression somewhere between rue and awe on his face.

They made it to the servants' entrance without incident, and slipped in and down the nearest hall - and nearly into the arms of a servant who was balancing multiple trays of food. "Oh, good," he said, and shoved the trays in their direction; Katara and Sokka, who were closest to him, had to catch them in self-defense, just to keep them from spilling hot rice everywhere. "They were supposed to send somebody down to get these - just take them to the upper hall, you know the one."

"Indeed we do," Sokka lied, recovering, as he passed one tray back to Suki. "We'll just - go do that now."

"Glad to hear it," the servant said, laughing, and clapped him on the shoulder before turning around to go back the way he had come.

"So, what's Aang got to say about that?" Sokka said, once the servant was gone.

Katara glared at him. "He was behind us, making sure none of the guards outside noticed us coming in," she said. "It's not like he can be in two places at once."

"Oh, yeah, no, of course," Sokka said, "dead and invisible's fine, but in two places at once is totally ridiculous."

Katara's mouth went pinched, but Suki stepped in before she could say anything. "Okay, okay," Suki said, nudging Sokka in the elbow with her tray. "The point is, it all worked out fine, and now we look like we have a reason to be walking around in here, which is a good thing."

"I don't know," Katara said. "I mean, we are supposed to know where we're going - if we accidentally wander off to, oh, the dungeons or something, somebody's probably going to notice we're not supposed to be there."

"Then we'll pick a room, and wait there; you can send Aang out to look for the king and queen's chambers - if that's all right, Avatar Aang," and this Suki directed to the room in general, since she had no idea where he was standing. "Then, when he knows where it is, he can come back and we can go right there."

"He's over here," Katara said, gesturing to the air next to her, "and yeah, that sounds good."

They meandered down the hall a little way, until they found a plain-looking door; Sokka shoved it open with his shoulder, and then went suddenly still. "Oh," he said. "Uh. Beg pardon, your majesties?"