KATARA HAD FORGOT about her task the moment the guards threw her into her cell. All she could think of was sleep. The sound of sandstorms gusting outside served as her lullaby.
She figured she could spare a few moments for rest. Zuko would come for her, or Ouji. The young man was bound to wake her up for dinner. Or was it past dinner time now? She couldn't tell and she couldn't be bothered to open her eyes and look out the window. Instead, sleep overtook her and her thoughts slipped out of time.
Dreams came swiftly. Of huge white things like giant bird-wings sailing across the sky. Of great cities with impossibly tall buildings, shining in the sun with shapes like beetles and flattened waterdrops speeding along the streets.
Suddenly the wings she laid upon faltered and each white feather began to fall, hurtling to the ground like pointed swords. Buildings shattered like glass, fires erupted from below, and the land itself heaved like storm-tossed seas. Sand rained down like water, covering the buildings and temples—temples older than time itself. The sky darkened, an inverted sea of sluggish ashen waves crashing around the mountain's peaks. Below, odd lights flashed across the now-ruined valley; washed-out blues and reds that failed to dispel the dusky murk that shrouded their source.
Lightening streaked up at the clouds and thunder rumbled, seeming to shake the entire foundation of the world on its axis. Across the slope of shattered domes, steam and smoke rose from scattered vents shaped like craters. Red-hot liquid erupted from below the surface, oozing down the rocky inclines of mortar. It spilt red like blood, inky rivulets that soon dried up the land until there was nothing left.
Katara woke in darkness of her cell with a gasp. Shaking, she brought a hand to her chest and tried to still the erratic beatings of her heart. It was as though she had been dreaming someone else's dream, or an entire nation's. The thought worried her stomach and fuzzied her brain. This place might have finally broken her and here she was, circling the drain of insanity. She wasn't sure how much more she could endure.
Pale beams of moonlight filtered through the window above and Katara sat up. How long had she been asleep? She glanced down and saw a tray of food beside her mat. Ouji must have dropped it off. But why didn't he wake her? More importantly, where was Zuko? Why wasn't he back yet?
Her stomach rumbled in nervous apprehension. She suddenly felt nauseated. She didn't know what she would do if something happened to Zuko. She would be alone again, without hope, and that terrified her beyond measure.
"Zuko, where are you?"
"Shouldn't you be calling for your betrothed?"
Katara jumped in fright and spun around. The cell door then opened and a pair of slender figures slipped through before the door slammed shut again. Veiled in long dark cloaks, the visitors paused to study the waterbender carefully for a moment. The smaller of the two reached up to pull back her hood, revealing a long, thick braid of ebony and a gleaming face of marble.
"Young women are so fickle these days," the woman said. "Don't you agree, Brother?"
He lowered his hood with a nod. "One would wonder why she calls for the Fire Lord and not the Avatar."
Katara's stomach twisted in knots. Yin and Yang were in her cell and they were going to invade her mind. This was the moment she had been dreading, and she wasn't sure if she was even in the right mind to handle their interrogation. Her thoughts were too focussed on Zuko.
"Are you here to kill me?" There was unmistakable defiance in her tone, but underneath that was a layer of uncertainty and numb fear.
There was no way they could believe that she was already broken, yet why else would they be there to pick apart her memories? Was she no longer of any use to them? Were they here to kill her?
She fought to control her bottom lip from trembling. She didn't want to die, not here, not like this. If this was going to be her end, then she would make it such an end to be worthy of her title as a master waterbender. She would go out fighting and she would take these devils with her.
She immediately shifted into an offensive stance. Lifting her hands, she pointed her fingers at her opponents with deadly accuracy. She would bend the Truth-Seers' blood in an instance. It would end any hope for escape, but at least she would buy Zuko some time and give him a fighting chance.
"Do not bother, Master Katara," Yin said, raising a delicate hand. "We are not here to hurt you. We only wish to take a peek inside your mind."
"Just to corroborate Kage-san's version of events," Yang added. "We will not push any further. We do not wish to kill you . . . yet."
Katara swallowed dryly and lowered her hands a fraction of an inch. She wasn't completely convinced of their intentions, but she knew she hadn't given them all the information they wanted. If she died now, that information would die with her.
"Please, sit." Yin motioned to the mat on the floor. "We will make this as quick and painless as possible."
Katara highly doubted that as she looked back and forth between the twins. She glanced at the bed and nodded curtly. Quick and easy would be best. But would the techniques she had learnt from Kala allow her to keep her memories safe?
Lowering her guard, Katara carefully took a seat on the mat. She eyed the siblings warily as they walked over to her. Both slowly knelt down on either side of her and her anxiety only grew. She tried to even out her breathing, to appear less terrified than she actually was. It wasn't working.
The twins withdrew their slender arms from their sleeves and linked hands. With their free hands they reached out to place two fingers on either side of Katara's temples. Closing their milky-coloured eyes, both Truth-Seers took in a deep collective breath, and Katara waited. She could feel the cold touch of their fingers on her skin and she shuddered. Closing her own eyes, she waited for the black and terrible emotions to come to her like some beast out of the night, but they did not come. Instead, her bowels seemed weighted with lead and she felt a sort of lethargy linger in her limbs.
Her ears then rang with persecuted laughter. She winced and tried to shut the voices out, replacing it with something else—something from her past. A woman's voice. A song sung long ago. Her mother's song.
This song was inside her now. And as the tears began to flow freely, this new sodden heaviness of peace weighed down her limbs so strongly that only her mother's voice alone could move her. She knew she should have resisted, turned back or at least rested here upon the bottom of utmost contentment. But she had to go forward, towards the sound of the voice. She had to see her mother. She had to keep going.
Suddenly the walls of her cell started to close in and her thoughts became white, not black, descending not into the depths of a bottomless chasm but floating on the edge of oblivion. There was an emptiness inside her now, a void, and it was spreading. She would not touch the solid bottom of her memories anymore. She would fade away from them until she could no longer see herself—until she could no longer be herself.
And that was when her world went blank.
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回
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SUNRISE WAS SPLENDID and terrible. The stars paled in the rose-streaked sky as a frigid blast of desert wind slackened towards a fitful calm.
Katara watched from behind her barred window, waiting for the sun to break over the horizon. When the wind finally stopped and the sand settled, she could pick out the darker hills in the distance. Never had the sky been so clear before. When the sun finally rose, it was like a fountain of liquid gold exploding across the barren landscape. In the space of a second she was already blinded.
She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes that ached from that single brief glimpse, as if someone had shoved white hot daggers into her head.
"Well, that was smart of me," she mumbled to herself, blinking back the dotted stars that crossed her vision.
It wasn't as though she would be able to see Zuko from her window. He was far more covert than that. He wouldn't simply roam the desert in broad daylight. He had most likely already made it back to the prison late last night. But still she worried. Who knew what kind of danger he could have got himself into underneath the desert city.
Suddenly there was a noise above her and she glanced up and to the left. The vent high above the window opened and a familiar face peeked out.
"Hey!" Ouji gave a slight wave before gracefully tumbling out of the vent.
Katara still couldn't get over how nimble the boy was, or how he managed to contort himself into such small spaces. He sort of reminded her of a male version of Ty Lee. He even had the same upbeat attitude as the Fire Nation girl. She wondered if Ouji was skilled in pressure point attacks as well.
"I came to see you last night," he said, handing her a waterskin, "but you were asleep."
She took the waterskin and drank greedily. "The twins interrogated me," she said between gulps. "I was exhausted."
"You're lucky to be alive." He slipped off his satchel so that he could rummage around for her breakfast.
"I guess so." She finished drinking and let the strap from the waterskin dangle from her fingers. "But the thing is, I can barely remember anything."
"You don't remember them interrogating you?" She shook her head and Ouji frowned, handing her a small wrap of rice. "You're going have to talk with Kala, then."
Katara took the proffered food and sat down on her mat.
"She's not in her cell." She glanced up at Ouji, who was still resting on his haunches. "Do you know where she is?"
"She's been taken back to her own cell." He pointed up at the ceiling. "It's on the floor above."
"In the cell above mine?"
"No . . . That cell's empty."
Katara bit into her meal and chewed absently. Silence filled the air. After a moment Ouji stood up, folding the flap of his satchel and looping the strap over his shoulder.
"Ouji, could you tell me more about the Painted Lady?"
The young man stood still for a moment, no readable expression registering on his face. When he didn't respond right away, Katara lowered her head.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I should have considered your feelings. It was wrong of me to ask such a bold question."
He shook head. "No, it's all right. I was just taken off guard is all. I'd like to tell you about my mother, Katara." A sad smile angled across his lips. "She was the kindest, gentlest person I ever knew. She raised me like her own, even though she had her own children."
"There were other children here?"
"No, my mother lost her children before she came to the prison. They were taken from her. Although I was only her adopted son, she always treated me like one of her own. I know you might think I'm biased since I never knew my parents, but because of her I know what unconditional love is. And I know that parents don't automatically love their children just because they're kin."
It was impossible to imagine a mother not loving her children unconditionally, but it was true. Katara wondered what kind of hell this Painted Lady suffered having her children taken away from her. She could only imagine. However, she did know what it was like to have a mother taken away. More than anyone, she knew the kind of pain that Ouji felt.
"You know that my father is a firebender?" Ouji asked. "One of the Fifth Column guards?"
Katara nodded.
"Well, what you don't know is that he's still here."
"One of the guards here is your father?"
"No, not one of the guards. The warden." Ouji smiled bitterly. "Kenzo's my father."
"How—?"
"I discovered the truth when I was six or seven." He laughed derisively. "Discovered? More like the bastard told me in a fit of rage when he caught me escaping the prison for the first time." He glanced down at his dark hands. "I tried to fight him but he burned me. He was so disgusted that I couldn't bend yet. He said I was worthless like my mother, the Water Tribe whore who gave birth to me.
"I was so angry. How could someone like him be my father? Later, my mother told me that one cannot choose one's family. It's the will of the gods. Some of us are fortunate while others are not. But one should never use that as an excuse to give up or to become the same monsters that torment us.
"When I discovered that I could bend, she told me that bending doesn't make a man great. It's about what's in here that counts." He placed his hand over his heart. "A great man is noble, wise and patient. It's not brawn or fear that brings him respect but the ability to do what's right when everything is wrong, to make tough decisions in difficult times, to see beyond selfish desires and to carry on despite the pain. That inner strength that can move nations.
"I didn't understand what she meant back then, but now I think I do—now that I've met you, Katara."
She gave him a small smile before averting her eyes, suddenly feeling quite shy. Even after all these years she still couldn't see her role in the war as something inspiring, not like Aang and Zuko's.
Her smile faltered. Where was Zuko? The guards hadn't come to retrieve her for interrogation last night or early this morning, and the twins had said nothing to her about Zuko—or the assassin, as they knew him. Or at least she thought they didn't. She could remember them coming into her cell and telling her that they weren't going to hurt her, but after that it was all blank.
Why couldn't she remember?
Frustrated, she tore at her hair in impotent anger.
"Are you okay?"
Ouji tentatively placed a hand on her shoulder and she stiffened. She must have looked out of sorts, clutching at her hair and muttering to herself as she was.
"I'm fine," she lied, offering the young man a brave face. "I'm just trying to wrack my brain to remember what the twins interrogated me about."
Ouji's brow creased deeply. "I don't want to worry you, but that's probably not a good sign if you can't remember. You need to speak to Kala as soon as possible."
"But how? She's on an entirely different floor now."
"You leave that to me." He walked over to vent. "I'll go talk to her right after I deliver Chen his meal."
Katara took in a shaky breath and nodded. She'd feel better when she talked to Kala. She'd feel safer once she knew Zuko was okay.
"Ouji, this might be an odd question, but why was your mother called the Painted Lady? I really don't mean to burden you with these questions, but I read her name in that journal you stole for me."
"My mother was mentioned in the journal?" His brow furrowed darkly once more. "Do you have it on you?"
"No, I had to leave it in the hidden compartment."
"Oh."
"But it mentioned something about a royal burial chamber."
Ouji nodded slowly. "Her grave. I guess they have to keep track of things like that." He took in a deep breath and continued, "All I can tell you is that it wasn't the prisoners who started calling her the Painted Lady. Kala told me that was the title the guards gave her when she first arrived at the prison. They said she came from royalty, but since she was a traitor she lost her title."
"Her title?"
"Yes. She was Fire Lady Ursa."
"Ursa?" Katara felt as if all the air had been sucked out of her lungs. The Painted Lady was Zuko's mother. Was his mother; past-tense. Spirits have mercy!
There was a pregnant pause and suddenly what sounded like the scraping of iron on stone softly grated above their heads.
"What was that?" Katara asked.
"Someone opened the door to my mother's cell!"
"Ouji, wait!" Katara stretched out her hand to capture the young man's arm, but it was too late. He had already hoisted himself up into the vent and was crawling upwards.
She looked up at the ceiling and held her breath so that she could listen. There was the sound of scuffling and something being overturned, and then Ouji's voice boomed with anger and accusation.
"What are you doing here, Assassin?"
Zuko?
This wasn't good.
Quickly her fear for Zuko's safety had been shifted onto Ouji. The boy was no match for the Fire Lord. She wasn't even sure if Zuko would spare the young man's life, for such a move would surely break his cover.
There was more scuffling, followed by shouts, and that grating noise sounded again—except this time her cell door was opened. Katara immediately dashed out into the hallway and held onto the railing that looked into the opening of the gallery. She peered upwards, trying to focus on what little she could see despite the panic rising in her chest.
She spied Ouji's fast, erratic movements. He was kicking wide arcs at an even faster moving black figure. Zuko dodged the young man's angry attacks with ease, blocking what kicks and punches got close to his retreating form. Although Katara was more than glad to see him alive, she was worried about Ouji's safety. She couldn't very well shout out for Zuko to stop or explain why Ouji was attacking him. She could only pray that the guards would break up the fight before someone got hurt.
Shouting could be heard from all corners of the prison floor and Katara knew she wasn't the only prisoner released from her cell to witness the fight. She craned her neck upwards to see Zuko switching from defensive to offensive mode. Though he wasn't using his fire, he was just as deadly with his weapons and his feet. He quickly pulled out his dao swords and began slicing through the air with calculated grace.
Ouji's blue eyes blazed with fury and a ball of fire ignited in his palms.
"No!"
Suddenly there was the familiar sound of rushing water. Katara could see a tiny stream of water form like a whip and lash around Ouji's ankle, pulling him out from beneath his feet. As he fell to the ground, the water shifted and dispersed, freezing to form ice daggers that shot forward with deadly accuracy. Zuko was pinned to the wall in seconds.
"That's enough, Kala!" a guard's voice boomed.
Kala?
At this point the guards finally intervened and broke up the fight, casting stern glances at the prisoners before locking them back in their cells. The guards had not yet come for her. Perhaps they didn't even know that the cells on her floor had been opened. Regardless, Katara couldn't have moved if she tried. She had to see what was going to happen to Kala and Ouji—and what Zuko was going to do to them.
"Take those two to the interrogation floor," a familiar voice barked. It was Kenzo. "I take it you are well, Assassin?"
Katara watched as Zuko pulled the ice daggers out of his shirt and freed himself from the wall. If he had allowed himself to bend fire, he could have stopped the daggers before they hit him. However, he had to maintain the façade of a non-bending assassin.
But why was he in Ursa's cell to begin with? How did he find out? And what was going to happen to Kala and Ouji now?
