Note to Reader: A little longer than usual, but full of action and all that other good stuff. I haven't had time to fully review the previous chapters, but I revised chapter one: fixed all the grammar stuff and added a bit to the description.
Have at it.
Chapter 10: Escape and Plot
The palace dinning room was meant to accommodate throngs of royal guests, so it was a cavernous, dark-crimson room, like every other room in the palace. Gold trimmed the corners and jutting woodwork and an astonishingly long table stretched from one end of the room to the other.
Normally, it was surrounded by high back chairs seating high-nosed aristocrats, but today it only had two such chairs positioned at the far end, closest to the kitchen. In those chairs were cradled the butts of the two most powerful people in the Fire Nation: the Fire Lord, Zuko, cutting up the last of a particularly well done cut of gamey meat, and his wife, Fire Lady Mai, who was amused by the simple, silly things her husband did when nobody of political import was watching.
"You always ask for it so overcooked," said Mai, resting her chin in her delicate hand.
Zuko looked up from his slicing and responded. "It's not 'overcooked.'"
"These are choice cuts from the best animals around and you insist that the best chefs in the Fire Nation burn it to a crisp."
"I like it well done."
Mai smiled and noticed that her husband still hadn't touched his vegetables. "Zuko…" she said in her deep, feminine voice, pointing to the flora in question.
"I know I haven't touched my vegetables. I know they're good for me." He poked at the leafy green and red potpourri on his plate. He had developed resentment for flowery plant matter during his years in the palace.
Zuko mused on how they employed the best chefs in the Fire Nation, as his wife had stated, yet they kept serving him artistically presented salads that either tasted like dried leaves picked off the street or unused parchment. At least when it was tasteless, he could smother it in pepper sauce and, essentially, eat it like soup.
He leaned away from today's repellently fragrant pile of crunchy leaves. "I just don't like this stuff." he finally said. He looked around his chair at Naoki, who stood stiff by one of the square pillars embedded in the russet wall. "How about you, Naoki? You like salad?" asked the Fire Lord, trying to pawn off his veggies on somebody else's taste buds.
"Sir, not particularly, sir. Anyway, I ate a helping of chipped… something meat just an hour ago, sir." The bodyguard's face plate was rubbing against his scar and he desperately wanted to scratch his chin. He couldn't, though. His Fire Academy instilled discipline wouldn't let him act without orders and his orders were to guard the Fire Lord from all conceivable and inconceivable threats. Nowhere in those orders was chin scratching stipulated, so he just stood at attention in discomfort.
Naoki's consistent, extremely formal manner amused Zuko, though the guard's near constant presence was starting to wear on Mai. The only place where she had her husband all to herself was in the bedroom and even there she knew that the guard was just beyond the wall. She tried to put it out of her mind.
The Fire Lord let his fork clatter on his plate. He winced as he rubbed his severely scared left eye with his fingers.
"Zuko, are you alright?" asked his concerned wife.
"Mm, it's getting worse. The doctors say it's inevitable that I'll lose sight in it." He stopped rubbing and smiled at his wife. "But I still hold to hoping they're wrong."
"So do I," said Mai with a weak smile. Her concern overtook her hope.
Meanwhile, Bai Tan was seated comfortably in his favorite thinking spot under the white evergreen tree in the palace garden. He had already walked about the garden and confirmed that he was, in fact, alone.
"The Fire Lord is under voluntary house arrest. Let me see… what can I do with this? Not very much. Not until Da Tan returns with the girl, the fearsome girl. It does mean that he'll be out of the public eye. He'll be safe, as well. I can't have him die, yet. First, he must fall. He must fall and pull his regime down with him."
"Perhaps… those random rebels seem to be cause a lot of grief, but nothing strong, nothing focused, nothing lasting. They need to pool their efforts if they wish to affect any significant change." He growled, rather distressed at the frequency with which he had been talking to himself, as of late.
"I do wish Da Tan was here," he sighed, heavily. "I can be myself around him. As it stands, only this white pine knows my honest thoughts." He feared madness was overtaking him and soon his reason would falter and his motives be brought to bear.
It didn't matter, though. He would give his sanity freely if it meant the utter ruin of the Fire Nation. Slowly, a plan was growing within him and consuming his every thought: a plague infecting in his mind's eye. "Yes, so long as they bring about their own end, so long as their funeral pyre is kindled by their hand."
"It's best you just put it out of your mind," Qilaq said to Azula as they made their way down the street, side by side. "Forget about them. They'll take care of themselves." The young woman's expression didn't betray any worry, but Qilaq saw it in the luster of her eyes. "Hey, just think," he endeavored to change the subject with another artful grin, "soon we'll be in Ba Sing Se. All our troubles will be over when we get there."
"Really?" she questioned with a thick air of doubt.
"Yep. Trust me." The Firebender narrowed her eyes at his ambiguous plead for faith. They squeezed shoulder to shoulder as they waded through the thickening market crowd. The mingled smell of plum-blossom, ripe trout and feet assaulted their sinuses. Whatever it was, it was very popular, drawing what seemed like most of the town to it.
Qilaq and Azula stood out as blue dots in the throng of otherwise earth toned clothing that walked around covering the various bodies of the townsfolk. The thought crossed Azula's mind that the two of them may be recognized by members of the mob that they had fought last night. It was dark and they were strangers to this place, but they could still be identified.
She still found herself dodging the gaze's of people that may recognizer her. It was slight comfort that nobody seemed to recognizer her as Azula: The Former Fire Nation Princess. Now they would recognizer her as the Firebender dressed like someone from the Northern Water Tribe, who attacked and burned several townsfolk last night.
A few pairs of eyes followed the two of them, but they didn't gaze very long. Qilaq had put on a rather somber face and occasionally locked his dark eyes with those of the gawkers', who would then turn away as though they were looking at something else.
After they turned a corner onto a less populated street, Qilaq chuckled to himself. "You really did take it to that guy, though," he said to his feisty companion. "That was pretty cool."
Azula smiled, proud of herself, but also happy with the compliment. "Which guy?" she asked, raising her eyebrows with an impish smile.
Qilaq laughed jauntily. Her levity about the situation surprised him. There was hope for her sense of humor, but it occurred to him that he probably shouldn't be promoting her violent behavior, not because he wasn't himself violent at times, but because he liked not being attacked by random people on the street, out for blood.
He put his rough hand on her shoulder. Azula looked at the intrusive appendage and then at the smiling Qilaq. Her expression melted into an odd look, like confusion and annoyance all nestled under a furrowed brow. Her companion just smiled and looked down the street, with his hand still on her shoulder and then, after they turned the corner at the local hair salon, he shoved her through the front door of the shop.
Azula's balance was too good for her to fall, but the push was strong enough that she staggered all the way into the middle of the room, where Zan, the hairdresser that had cut Azula's tangled tresses when they arrived in Xidezhen, was half done giving a man a shave.
"Whoa, whoa," said the jowly woman, drawing her razor away from her customer's neck.
Azula was about to yell at Qilaq, but he cut her off. "Stay hidden for a bit and then signal me when the train's about to leave."
"What?" questioned the young woman with bile. How dare he nearly push her down and then give her some ord… She noticed his face and tone had waxed completely serious. He didn't even look at her when he spoke.
Something was wrong.
"What's going on, hon?" asked Zan. Azula hid behind a chest of doors against the wall and looked at her hairdresser, putting her finger to her lips.
Zan wasn't quite sure what was happening, but she was smart enough to play along.
"What is thi-" started the half-shaved man before Zan pulled him back in the chair.
"Don't move or you'll get nicked," she warned and resumed scraping the white gunk off of the man's face with her razor.
"Well, look who it is," said Qilaq affably to the two mercenaries as they came to a halt right in front of him. "How are my two favorite head-hunters?" Both of the men grasped their weapons. "Easy boys. We don't want to make a scene." Qilaq gestured around at the passing pedestrians.
Azula peeked around the corner of the chest of drawers and, at the sight of the two men who had been hunting her all this time, a stew of mild fear and vengeful rage simmered inside her stomach. She was compelled to leap from her hiding spot and roast the men alive, but her double-edged fear kept her in check. One part was the fear that she wasn't good enough to win against both mercenaries. The other fear was how her Waterbending companion may react. Qilaq appeared to be handling it, anyway.
"I don't know. I'm feelin' like I do," said Fu Li, referring to the potential mayhem with a crooked grin and a twitch of his pointy nose, "especially if it means turning you into a pincushion." In a flash of motion, the little man pulled an arrow from his quiver and threaded it on his bow. A few passers by jumped away from the sudden, violent action.
Qilaq put his hands up and spoke like a propitious salesman. "Oh, but why waste yourselves when you could just do a little haggling and get your prize gift wrapped?"
"Huh?" said a perplexed Fu Li.
Da Tan put his thick hand on his partner's shoulder. "We're listening."
Everything in Azula's baser mind was telling her to make a break for it, now, and hope that she could outrun them, but… Qilaq wouldn't really betray her. Would he? No, it was a trick. That's why he pushed her in here and told her to wait. He was lying to them, obviously, and they were falling for his ploy.
"Good man. Good men," said the Waterbender with a nod. "Smart. Come with me. We'll work out the details along the way." The three men walked off down the road shoulder to shoulder. The large man quickly glanced down and met his partner's gaze communicating an unspoken plan. Fu Li cracked a subtle, devious smile and checked the dagger strapped to the small of his back.
After she was sure that the three of them had gone, she came out of her hiding place and walked out of the salon calmly, but with a purpose.
"Bye, hon," Zan called after her. She then returned to her work as though nothing out of the ordinary had transpired.
Qilaq's senses weren't fuzzy from the lack of sleep. He never went "fuzzy," but his periphery was completely blank and his field of vision felt flat. He could see the images but couldn't quite judge where they were going and at what speed. His brain was nagging his body to collapse into a deep slumber, but his will wasn't going to let that happen. His brain wasn't the boss of him.
With bloodshot eyes, he looked at the two men walking to his right. "So," he started, looking to the smaller of the two men, "if I recall correctly, your name is Fu Li. Am I right?" Fu Li didn't turn to meet his escort's gaze. He just darted his sharp little eyes to his left and growled something incomprehensible under his breath. He rubbed the bandage that covered the stab wound he had received the last time he and the Waterbender had met. Qilaq moved on and looked up at the towering mercenary directly to his right. "I don't think I caught your name, big guy."
"I didn't toss it," said Da Tan. The man's voice was as deep as a desert well, but the humor in his words made Qilaq think of a desert well with a clown at the bottom of it.
He giggled, "Fair enough. Don't suppose it matters. We're going to be going our separate ways here in a second, anyway."
After another block or two (he wasn't keeping track) the punchy Waterbender led the two men to the mouth of a dark alleyway between two tall, white stone buildings. "This way," he said as he started down the claustrophobic passage, bereft of light even under the midday Sun.
"No," boomed Da Tan stopping at the precipice of the shadows. "We're not doing that. No shortcuts. We're taking the long way. The scenic way."
Obviously, this man was no thick fool. Qilaq was really hoping he could get away with it, but now he could only drag them around town until he got Azula's signal. "Alright," he sighed. "We'll go around. It's your time."
At the same time, Azula was standing at the far west end of the transit station platform, looking as nonchalant as she could while keeping an eye on the windowless, gray car at the back of the train. She remembered several Earthbenders coming out of it when she and Qilaq first rode into town and she deduced that they were the ones that pushed the train along the track.
After a few minutes, she keyed in on a couple loud voices coming towards her.
"It sure is loud in the push car," said one of three men uniformed in tight, short-sleeved, yellow shirts and shorts, wearing green ankle braces and hats that looked like wide brimmed mixing bowls.
"What? Ha ha, I'm just kiddin'," laughed another one of them.
"Yeah, I gathered."
"It get's old after about the second time you hear it," said the third man to the first.
"Well, that's what makes it a classic," said the cheerful second man. "Anyway, I keep tellin' it long enough, it'll be true. One day, I really will be deaf on the job."
"Too bad that won't shut you up."
"What? Ha ha, just kiddin'. Classic." Their voices died away as they filed into the stone car at the back of the train.
After the door to the car shut behind them, Azula walked briskly into a narrow gap between two buildings just out of sight of the platform. She looked up into the crisp, cyan sky and then out of the ally to see if she was being watched. When she confirmed she was alone, she slid her feet out over the solid, sand-laced ground and then thrust her fist straight up, shooting off a bright plume of orange fire that billowed high above the buildings. After a few seconds' burn, she stopped and rushed out of the opposite end of the alley before anyone examined the source of the flame.
About a half a mile away from the station, the three men were making their way down a rather sparsely populated street. "I had a buyer, but that deal fell through, so she's on the market," Qilaq said to the two mercenaries. They stopped. A man opposite them was staring up into the northern sky. They followed his gaze and saw a pillar of fire rising above the city like a geyser.
Da Tan and Fu Li furrowed their brows at the odd sight and then it struck them: their quarry was there. This man was luring them away from her. But, before either of the men could move to action, Qilaq struck first, stabbing his rigid fingers into Fu Li's bandaged wound like iron rods. Fu Li screamed in pain and Da Tan staggered back a step, but he managed to reflexively chop the Waterbender's throat with the edge of his giant hand.
Qilaq felt his Adam's apple crush his windpipe before snapping back into place. He choked as the huge obelisk of a man picked him up and hurled him down the street. The Waterbender broke his fall with his arm and rolled end over end.
All his vision went hazy as water and dirt clogged his eyes. His arms and legs felt as though they were separated from the rest of his body. He struggled to rise, spitting up dirt while trying to catch his breath at the same time.
"Again! Ahowwuhg," Fu Li moaned, writhing on the ground and clutching his reopened wound. "It hurts…" He looked at his partner, who was just standing, not smashing that vicious Water Savage into paste. "What are you…? Crush him!"
Da Tan was reluctant to smear a man in front of the myriad onlookers, who gathered at a safe distance, trembling with confused excitement, but this Waterbender was too dangerous to be left alive to further foil their attempts to capture the former Fire Nation princess. "Fine," he said with forced resolve.
At the station, Azula heard the conductor call out the stops along the way to the Earth Kingdom Capital. The train was about to grind away. She thought about waiting for Qilaq. She could even go and help him and end those two mercenaries, here and now. The two of them they could stay at the inn again, with Nobu, Lee and Aimi. She thought about how they had left the three Fire Nation immigrants and then… a vision of Qilaq screaming, turning to her with a malicious flash in his cold blue eyes… a chill ran up her spine like a flapping fish.
"Last call for Ba Sing Se and all stops en route!" yelled the conductor through cupped hands.
Such a vicious current ran just beneath his pacific surface. She didn't really know this man all that well, anyway. She considered trust, the trust he claimed to have in her. Her trust in him. It didn't seem like enough.
She'd be fine without him, anyway. She was strong, now. She'd manage. She turned and stepped onto the train.
Da Tan slammed his feet against the ground and tensed into a squat. Veins throbbed all over his bulging muscles and the street started to tremble. Fissures traced linear paths that connected in the shape of a large square and then, as the man grit his teeth and lifted his hands, a huge cube of earth rose out of the ground and levitated above his head.
A pipe running through the ground was snapped and water sprayed up and out of the gaping hole. The beastly Earthbender was quickly soaked. Qilaq heard the hiss of gushing water behind him, rolled over and, with a swipe of his palms, he froze the thin glaze of liquid. A crust of ice formed up to Da Tan's neck.
The giant block feel right back into the gap it had came from with an immense boom, as Da Tan broke his concentration to break out of his icy encasement. Qilaq scrambled to get his feet beneath him and, once up, set off at a run back to the train station.
The clever Waterbender had spent his day's touring the streets with Lee and making a mental map of the whole town. He had taken the two mercenaries on a circuitous route in order to waste time, but he had the quickest way back to the station already in his head. It was a harrowing effort for his fatigued brain to call up the route, but the adrenaline was helping with that.
The mighty Earthbender broke from his frozen restraint and ran after his assailant.
People about the train car chatted about this and that while Azula sat, looking out the open window behind her seat.
"You know, I heard that they're gonna start charging people to ride," said a man to the woman next to him, raising his bushy eyebrows.
"That's so ridiculous," responded the woman with crows-feet splaying from the corners of her eyes. "We already pay taxes for that and now they want to charge us per ride?"
"That's the price of progress, I guess."
Azula blocked out the conversation taking place across from her. She kept thinking that Qilaq could still come around the corner, get on the train and sit next to her with that stupid smile drawn on his face.
"All aboard!" the conductor wailed out the door before slamming it shut and walking up the narrow aisles to the front of the train. The town seemed to be gliding back as the train slowly inched forward.
Azula let out a sigh as the train started to move, but then she heard something. A commotion. Someone cursing. Then she saw Qilaq run up onto the platform and dash at the train as it gained speed. The lithe young woman wrapped her arm around the partition between the windows and hung out of the portal with her arm outstretched.
Qilaq rushed to catch the train, which was now moving as fast as he was and still gaining speed. He ran as hard as he could, harder even than that, and he was running out of platform. Azula's arm was just out of reach.
The platform dropped out from beneath him as he leapt through the air and locked his grip around his companion's forearm. She winced as the full weight of the dangling man nearly pulled her arm out of its socket.
The ground fell away from beneath him as the track quickly rose above the town. The splendorous panorama of the hill wreathed valley came into view and Qilaq let out a nervous scream, wondering why Azula hadn't pulled him into the train car yet.
She was trying to, but it was all she could do to keep from falling out of the window. His grip on her arm was starting to loosen. She pulled with all her might, but she couldn't pull a full grown man up with one arm at full extension.
Arms wrapped around her waist and grabbed her shoulders pulling her back. She let go of the window and threw her other arm down to double her grip on Qilaq's slipping arm. The man with bushy eyebrows and the woman with crows-feet pulled Azula in and dragged the swarthy man attached to her through the portal.
Once safely in the car, the four tangled people released their grips and fell apart, panting and groaning.
"You two alright?" panted the man, lying back in his seat.
"You both are crazy, you know that?" gasped the older woman.
Azula glowered at her companion from the stone floor of the train. "Why are you so heavy, you thin idiot." Qilaq just laughed and looked up at his scowly savior. There was that smile, just as Azula had anticipated.
Da Tan had arrived at the transit platform just in time to see the train grind off with his two foes' hanging off the side of it. A long sigh helped to alleviate the man's seething irritation. It didn't matter. He knew they would probably end up in Ba Sing Se. That's the best place to pawn off a person for profit.
When he walked back to where he was frozen, he found his partner sitting on the rocky steps to somebody's front door, shaded by an awning. A man walked by and motioned to see if Fu Li needed any help.
"Get bent!" he yelled at the Good Samaritan.
"You first, buddy," retorted the miffed man, walking on.
Da Tan noticed his diminutive partner wasn't even in the mood to laugh at his own pun. "How's the leg?" he asked.
"He stabbed it… with his fingers… how do ya think it is? I rewrapped it."
The towering man wasn't really paying attention to his partner. He had noticed a tiny dot circling in the sky, so he pulled something from his belt. It was a wad of leather attached to a line.
"I tell ya," Fu Li seethed, "next time I see that guy I'm just gonna shoot. I'm gonna shoot so many… What are you doing?" he asked his friend, who was swinging the leather around. "Ah!" exclaimed the archer as a large bird swooped down out of nowhere. "What is that? That ain't a messenger hawk." Indeed, the bird was far more slender than a hawk, with long yellow legs and wings like crooked black swords.
"This is a falcon-kite. It's three times faster than your average messenger hawk and can cover almost twice the distance."
"Wow, it's pretty expensive, I'll bet."
"My brother is well connected. That's how we got the gold so quick."
"Bai Tan, huh? Hey there…" Fu Li stood carefully and tried to pet the bird perched on his friend's massive arm, while Da Tan unrolled a scroll from the streamlined canister on the bird's back. The raptor raised its wings and screeched at the injured man, who staggered back and hopped on his right leg to regain his balance.
"She doesn't like you," said the massive man, unrolling the piece of parchment.
"Yeah, well I don't like her, damn bird." The angry archer sat down carefully and adopted a forlorn look. "Why don't the chicks like me, Da Tan?"
"Because you are who you are," he rumbled while he read the letter.
"Well… I can't help what I am." The hit man reflected for a minute, then brightened a bit. "Hey, money's all the love I need, hee heh," he cackled in his unique way.
"Face it, Fu Li, you're repellant."
"Hey! Up your giant crack!"
"And, as to getting money, it looks like we might have competition for our prize." Da Tan crushed the paper in his huge fist.
"What? Who?"
"Some friend of the Fire Lord from the Southern Water Tribe."
"Aw, that's miles out. There's no way he'll beat us to the girl."
"Yeah, but to be sure, we've been sent a ride."
"A ride? What ride? Ah!" Fu Li exclaimed as a man atop a giant eel-hound rode up with another giant green beast in tow.
"There it is," said Da Tan as he patted the smooth green muzzle of the massive lizard monstrosity.
"Gentlemen, here is your mount," said the rider with lips puckered under his wispy black mustache. "My regards to Master Bai Tan," and as suddenly as he had appeared, he was gone in flurry of spindly green legs and dust.
"What the… An eel-hound. Rockin'. We'll be there in no time. Ah!" The beast growled at Fu Li and the man staggered back once again.
Da Tan mounted the beast and pulled his partner up. The Earthbending mercenary thought about his brother, the Fire Nation advisor, and shook his head. "He may be a two-faced maniac, but at least he's reliable."
When the couple that had helped Azula and Qilaq left them alone in the car, Azula decided to propose her plan and use her partner to her advantage. "We could set a trap for them," she said out of nowhere.
"What? Trap who?" he asked, rubbing some more dust from his kinky black hair.
"Those two bounty hunters. You seem set on protecting me, so it stands to reason that we take them out of the picture, take the initiative."
"To keep you safe?"
"To save your princess, oh, brave knight," she said with a humored sarcasm. "The best part is they will come to us. We can fight them on our terms. We'll have the advantage."
"Mhm." He noticed one of his short dreadlocks was frayed, so he twisted it back together by rubbing it between his palms.
"It's simple. I get them to chase me, draw them to a predetermined location that is most advantageous to us, your abilities in particular, and then-"
"I kill them," Qilaq finished for her, though those weren't the words she had intended to use. "You want me to kill them for you."
"I… I see no other option," she said with a very self-righteous air. "If we don't stop them, they'll just keep hunting us."
"Yes, you're right. They won't stop hunting you." he said leaning back in the wide, four-seated bench. "We'll do a bit more plotting once we're in the city. In the mean time, can you do me a favor, sister?"
Azula rolled her eyes. "What, brother?"
"Ha, can you keep a lookout while I catch some sheepolas?"
"What?" she questioned, furrowing her brow in confusion.
"Sleep. Watch out for me while I sleep."
It struck her that he hadn't slept since the night before last. "I'll keep watch," she agreed with an even tone.
"Thanks," and with that, he put his head back, relaxed, and went out like a pinched candle.