Sokka leapt for the cup of water in Katara's hand like it was going to save his life, and Suki had to swallow a giggle. "You are the best thing ever," he said to Katara, quite sincerely; and then he gave Suki a glance she couldn't quite interpret, and downed the whole cup in one giant gulp.

Suki turned to find Yue, because it was probably best that she be the one to give Toph her water, instead of Katara; but Yue was already moving, meeting Suki's eyes with a little nod.

Suki hadn't been close enough to hear what Professor Zei had been saying, before he and Katara had fallen silent and begun to walk with their shoulders tight as knots. But the look on Katara's face, that sudden fierce unhappiness that had had her raising her fist—that was the look Katara got when people were dead and she hated someone for it. Usually herself. That was the look that meant there were going to be some conversations where one of the important participants was invisible.

She was looking at Katara, a moment away from opening her mouth even though she had no idea what she was going to say; and then Toph jerked in the corner of her eye.

"I'm sorry," Yue said immediately, "I didn't mean to—"

"Nah," Toph said. "Wasn't you—it's this stupid sand." She kicked at it with one foot—bare, as always, to help her feel. "The flats back there were fine, but the sand makes everything weird. Fuzzy. It's harder for me to tell where the edges of things are." She reached out, less confidently than usual, for the cup; Yue touched a finger to the back of her hand to help guide her along. "I can do it!" Toph insisted, but Suki was watching, and she didn't yank her hand away.

"I'm afraid it will only get sandier from here," Professor Zei said apologetically. "At least temporarily—we are approaching the dunes, we will not hit more solid ground until tomorrow at the earliest."

"Great," Toph said sourly.

"You can't bend sand?" Suki said.

"It is possible," Professor Zei said. "The people of the desert are called Sandbenders for that very reason—"

"But it's weird," Toph said. "It's not like rocks. You can't get a good grip on sand." She made a face. "When you Earthbend, you have to stand your ground."

"Kind of literally," Sokka said, and then lifted his hands defensively when Toph snorted. "Hey, I get it, sand doesn't really stand its ground."

"It is not, however, something to underestimate," Professor Zei said, and when Suki glanced at him, he was looking off into the distance, at a wide brownish smudge on the horizon.

"What's that?" Katara said.

"A sandstorm, I believe," Professor Zei said. "It will come more quickly than you might think; we should stay by the ridge until it either strikes or passes."

.*.*.*.

Maybe Toph didn't like sand, but she could bend it, at least a little; and Katara watched her hands reluctantly as she plunged her fingers into the sand and twisted. She'd been putting it off the whole way through the mountains, telling herself she shouldn't even start with Toph when she hadn't finished Waterbending. But Yue had ruined that particular excuse, Katara thought grumpily.

"Instant sandstone!" Sokka said. "Totally awesome."

Toph punched the new stone up into a little lean-to against the side of the ridge, and then they waited. Katara was still hoping it might slide by them, mostly because being stuck in a small space with Toph was not something she was looking forward to, but it was barrelling right toward them. It almost reminded Katara of home, in the last few minutes before it hit them; she could close her eyes and block out the heat, and pretend the stinging against her skin was sleet instead of sand.

None of it hurt Aang, of course, but a moment after they piled in and Toph closed up the last wall behind them, he drifted through the side. He still looked pensive, but he wasn't brooding by himself several hundred feet up, and when Katara offered him a tiny smile, he returned it.

"Hope you're happy," Toph muttered as she shuffled by, and Katara clenched her fists and tried not to want to punch her again.

"This is not the same thing as helping us set up camp!" she said. "You're completely impossible."

Toph snorted. "Look, I carry my own weight," she said, and she had repeated the same thing so often as they were crossing the mountains that Katara could practically feel her ears shriveling, hearing it again. "I don't need anything from you—I don't know why you have so much trouble with that."

"I don't need you to need things from me," Katara said, "I need things from you!"

"... Sorry, can you say that one more time?" Sokka said.

Professor Zei was leaning against the further wall, watching them uncertainly like he wasn't sure whether he was allowed to say anything—not his area of expertise, Katara thought sourly. Suki looked like she was about to say something, but Yue touched her elbow, and she kept quiet.

And Toph—Toph had a deeply skeptical expression, arms crossed over her chest. "I don't need help," she said sharply, "I can handle myself."

Katara stared at her. "It's like you aren't even listening to me. We split up chores to help each other—I'm asking you to help all of us."

She was about to spit out something else angry, but then Aang drifted in front of her, Toph's annoyed expression visible through his face. "Wait," he said quietly. "Wait, Katara, remember her parents."

Katara looked at him, and forced herself to take a deep breath. He was right, she'd let herself forget half the reason Toph had come with them in the first place. You need help, Toph's father had said, you always will, and Katara had seen her face when he said it. "I'm not trying to help you," she said again, "I'm trying to get you to help me."

Toph was still tilting her head warily. "You don't want to help me," she repeated.

"To be honest, I still sort of want to punch you in the head," Katara said.

Toph narrowed her eyes, and then, abruptly, started to giggle. "That's not very nice," she said. "And here I thought you were the sugar queen."

"Normally I'm very nice," Katara said. "It's just that I don't like you," but when she sat back against the sandstone wall, she could feel herself smiling. Just a little.

Despite Uncle's promise and the bizarre influence it had over him, Zuko found himself swallowing hard when they reached the gates of Sennang. Surely even Uncle's brazen peculiarity could not get them through this.

But Uncle beamed kindly at the heavily-armored Earth Kingdom soldier at the gate, and then flashed the man his palm; and the soldier bowed and led them inside himself.

It reminded Zuko of something, when he was done staring in shock—Uncle, something in his hand, someone letting them in somewhere they never should have been able to get—

"The barn," he said abruptly, pausing halfway up the set of steps they were climbing.

Uncle turned to him with both eyebrows raised. "What was that, nephew?"

The soldier had stopped, too, waiting for them on the—the next landing of the palace stairs, Zuko realized belatedly, because that was where they were. No wonder Uncle had allowed their ostrich horses to be led away.

What was it that Uncle carried, that would have him both let into a barn and brought to an Earth Kingdom palace?

Zuko shook his head and began climbing again, and only when the soldier had turned and begun to move again did he look at Uncle. "That thing, that little—coin you have."

"Ah, yes," Uncle said, nodding, and then glanced up the stairs, toward the broad palace doors waiting at the top. "A little patience, Zuko, and you will see."

Sometimes he really hated Uncle Iroh.

They were not led into the main hall, nowhere Zuko would expect petitioners or guests to be taken; the soldier took them down a side corridor instead, to a nondescript little room where they were probably going to be murdered, and left them there with another deep bow.

"Uncle—"

"Patience," Uncle said. "It will be easier to understand when the queen is here."

Zuko didn't even try to keep his jaw from dropping. "The queen? Uncle—"

"All in good time, my nephew," Uncle said, and smiled.

The storm wasn't all that long—not compared to the winter storms that could go on for days at home. But it moved a lot of sand; when the howl of the wind had died down and Toph cracked the side of their little shelter open, sand spilled in.

"Hey, whoa," Sokka said. "Wasn't there air there before?"

"Sandstorms can displace tremendous amounts of soil," Professor Zei said knowingly. "In the Si Wong, they have been known to deposit many feet of sand at a time."

Suki raised her eyebrows and glanced at the crack: sand was still pouring in steadily. "So," she said, conversational, "how buried do you suppose we are?"

Toph put a hand to the ceiling, such as it was, and tipped her head thoughtfully. "A foot or two, I'd say." She smirked, and turned her head in Katara's direction. "So this is another one of those times where you want my help?"

Katara sniffed. "Only if you feel like it," she said, but at last she felt no urge to ball up her hands when she said it.

There wasn't enough space for Toph to stand up, so she simply knelt in the middle and thrust her arms up sharply. The whole top of their shelter flew off, stone flung into the air by the movements of Toph's hands, and sand slid over the tops of the walls and swamped them immediately. But Toph was right: they hadn't been buried all that far. It wasn't exactly easy to clamber out of waist-high sand, but nobody suffocated.

The desert looked almost completely different, when they finally got out. The ridge was still there, but it was a lot shorter; they hadn't left the flats behind all that long ago, but now there was sand as far as Katara could see.

They'd clutched their packs, kept them close by their feet, but Sokka had lost track of his; Katara turned to ask Toph whether she could maybe stand to help with that, too, but when she looked, Toph was facing the deeper desert, frowning.

"Do you guys hear that?" she said.

"Hear what?" Katara said, and then, inevitably, heard it herself the second the words were out. A weird sound, a low heavy thrumming, like somebody tapping their fingers over the surface of a drum.

"That's not, like, another sandstorm, right?" Sokka said.

"Oh, no," Professor Zei said. "No, I expect that's a swarm of scorpion wasps."

"Excuse me?" Sokka said. "Scorpion wasps?"

"Massive," Professor Zei said. "Beautiful creatures, though of course I have not studied them extensively. They often follow in the wake of sandstorms, looking for injured creatures to—well." He cleared his throat.

"Did I pick the worst week ever to travel with you guys," Toph said, "or is this a normal level of life-threatening danger?"

"We're having something of an upswing right now," Suki admitted.

"He's seen them before," Aang said to Katara. "He knows what they're like, he must have run into them on his own—what did he do then?"

Katara obediently grabbed Professor Zei's elbow. "How do you normally avoid them?" she said. They were visible now, a cloud of something in the air a little to the east, and the hum was growing louder, loud enough that she had to raise her voice.

"I usually conceal myself beneath the sand," Professor Zei said. "Of course, there are so many of us now—we may not have time."

"Oh, excellent," Sokka said, "that's just perfect—clearly being buried under three feet of sand was actually the less dangerous situation to be in—"

Toph wiggled her toes, sand shifting under her feet. "And there's something else coming," she said. "I can't tell what it is, it's all blurry around the edges."

"Probably a horde of venomous camel spiders," Sokka said, throwing up his hands. "Maybe they'll kill the scorpion wasps for us, and we can just sneak away!"

Katara glanced at Yue, who looked back at her uncertainly. There was still water somewhere under the ground, but it had taken so long to pull up even enough to fill their little cups—they weren't going to be able to get enough to do much damage. At least Yue had her pike.

"Okay," Katara said, and touched Toph's shoulder. "You're going to have to help me again. How much Earthbending can you teach me in thirty seconds?"

.*.*.*.

"Not much," Toph said, but she thought about it anyway. She couldn't feel the wasps themselves, exactly, because they weren't touching the ground; but the buzz of their wings was making the sand shake, the fizz of it helpfully obscuring whatever was coming at them over the sand.

They were in trouble, they were, and she wasn't exactly happy about it; but she couldn't help thinking that it was something, and something was better than the absolute nothing that had happened to her at home. It was like being in the tournament ring again, except there was hot sand under her instead of smooth stone.

Also, there hadn't been any scorpion wasps in the tournament ring.

She bit her lip. Okay, so Katara was really annoying—but she'd said out loud that she needed Toph's help, and she hadn't acted like it bothered her to ask. Or it had, but only because of who she'd been asking, not what she'd been asking. And Toph had helped her, so it was only fair to ask right back. It wasn't like her parents, the way they'd made her feel so indebted to them, like she'd only ever take and never give—this was an even trade.

"They're in the air," she said, turning her face toward the spot where she knew Katara was standing. "I mean, I can hear them, but it sounds like there are a lot, and I'm not sure I'll be able to tell where they are—not the way I'll need to."

"Well," Katara said, and she was smiling, Toph could hear it in her voice. "Need some help?"

By the time the first scorpion wasp came zooming down at them, Katara's hands were sweaty around Toph's elbows. Toph yanked on the sand—stupid sand, she hated sand—as well as she could, and when Toph said, "Okay," Katara pulled her arms up and she hurled the sand outward.

A hit—she could tell, the closest thrum dropped away and something hit the sand not too far from her feet. Apparently, the Si Wong grew big scorpion wasps, because that thing was nearly the same size as Katara.

Sokka yelled somewhere behind them, and Toph could hear the sound of a sword slashing around. She yanked more sand from the ground around them as Yue's pike whistled by, and then Katara said, "Now!" and Toph punched the sand out again. Suki—that had to be Suki swinging a pack by the straps, and Toph couldn't help grinning a little when she heard it smack heavily into another wasp.

"Goodness," Professor Zei said, "what an extraordinary day this is turning out to be," and Toph didn't understand why he'd said it until she was reaching for another round of sand, stretching out with her bending—whatever had been coming at them on the ground, it was here.

Today was the first day Buyan had gone out with a sailer, and she had told herself again and again not to be stupid. Most scouting trips never saw anything, and that was good—that was best, that was because the Khatuo cared well for their territory. A boring day in the sailers was something to be proud of.

But her heart had still jumped into her throat when they'd seen the odd spray of sand to the southwest, and she had left her position to climb into the prow. She'd been the one to report to Alim that wasps were swarming around whatever had thrown that sand in the air, and when they drew around the little ridge and Shingqur drew the sailer to a halt, she was the first to put boots on the sand.

Scorpion wasps were fierce when they were all together, so she pulled a cone of sand up into the sky and hurled it through the middle of the swarm. Several of the wasps were tumbled upward, others down toward the sand, and by the time she let the little cyclone disperse, the swarm had been divided temporarily.

"Go!" Alim said, and the rest of the scouting team threw themselves over the sailer's sides and hurried forward.

Travelers—not entirely unusual, but this didn't look like a trading caravan hoping for a shortcut to Ba Sing Se. Buyan couldn't see anything that looked like it might be valuable; their packs were just about large enough for basic supplies, and judging by the way one of the girls was swinging hers around, they didn't have anything particularly precious in them.

Peculiar; but a guest was a guest, and guests were good fortune, at least if they were willing to give appropriate gifts of food. And there were not many, in this group. They would not overwhelm a shared bowl.

Buyan was the closest, and she reached them first, catching the man in the middle by the arm. "Come on," she said, "come on—we can get you away quickly, the wasps won't come after us."

"Of course—that is—" He glanced over his shoulder at one of the girls in blue, the one with dark hair.

The boy in blue was already sprinting toward Buyan. "No wasps? I am so there," he said, panting, as he sped past her toward the sailer.

.*.

The Khatuo had many places of shelter; they were the fourth of the nine tribes. Not the highest, but high enough to claim some of the largest cave-riddled outcroppings, and one with a year-round spring.

They were there now, resting before they traveled out into the deep desert again—the perfect place to receive guests.

The sailer nearly flew over the sand—Buyan had nothing to compare it to, she had never sailed on water, but she couldn't imagine it would be any better than the desert wind and the shush of sand against a hull. Their guests were huddled amidships; the girl in green looked like she was thinking about being sick, but the rest of them were looking around curiously, and the man was muttering to himself under his breath.

Buyan snagged one of the ropes as the sailer drew up near the stone, and swung herself over the side with a whoop, letting herself tumble to the ground.

"You're going to break your arm again if you don't stop doing that," Turhun said, leaping down to land beside her, and she considered pulling her headcloth aside just so she could stick her tongue out at him.

"Worth it," she declared.

They had taken longer than they should have to return from scouting, and Tomur was waiting in the first cave, with Arzigul beside him.

"We have brought you guests," Alim told them, bowing.

"Oh?" Tomur said. "Have they a meal to share?"

He was talking to Alim, but his eyes rested inquiringly on the man; yet when someone moved, it was the dark-haired girl in blue. "Oh—um, rice?" she said, sliding her pack from her shoulders. "I mean, there's—there might be some sand in it—"

Tomur laughed. "We will bend it out," he said. "As long as you offer the food in a spirit of goodwill, we will cook it for you and share it with you, and forgive a little sand."

"Hey, you got us away from those wasp things," the boy said. "I'm goodwill up to my eyeballs over here."

.*.*.*.

The Sandbenders kept their word—and once they were inside the caves, they unwrapped their faces, which made them way less creepy-looking. For a second there, when they'd come leaping out of nowhere and swept the wasps away, Sokka had thought they were in for a repeat of the swamp. But these guys were way nicer.

Although, to be fair, probably a lot fewer battalions of soldiers had come poking around in the Si Wong.

Anyway, they cooked a bunch of Katara's rice in a really big pot, and then they put it in a really big bowl, along with some meat and spices and funny layered bread.

"Youtazi," said the girl who sat down next to Sokka, pinching a piece of meat between her fingers and lifting it straight from the bowl to her mouth. "Try it, it's good."

It was good, and so was the meat, even though Sokka was pretty sure it was from camel spiders; and as far as he could tell, the rice was sand-free.

"So," said the tall woman, Arzigul, when the big bowl was half-empty. "If you are not traders, why are you traveling the desert?"

"It's the quickest route to Ba Sing Se," Suki said, "when you aren't being swarmed by scorpion wasps."

"And you need to get to Ba Sing Se quickly," Arzigul said.

This time, it was Yue who answered. "There's something we hope to find there," she said, "and it's better found sooner than later."

"Much better?" said the leader, Tomur.

"Much," Yue said, and didn't elaborate.

Tomur and Arzigul glanced at each other; Arzigul's headcloth hid her expression when she turned her head, but Tomur looked intrigued. "Is it so great a secret," he said, "that you would share rice and not your reasoning?"

Katara shifted awkwardly beside Yue, and cleared her throat. "We don't know yet," she said, "but if we find it, well. We're going to need to tell the king of Ba Sing Se, at least," and they hadn't even talked about it yet, but she was totally right. If there really was going to be an eclipse, they'd need to tell somebody who could tell the rest of the Earth Kingdoms, and there was nobody better to do that than the king of the biggest one.

"The king of Ba Sing Se?" Tomur said. "And why do you think he'll listen to you?"

Katara sighed. "Because I'm the Avatar," she said, and Sokka almost laughed. He liked the Avatar talk nearly as much as the dead guy talk.

If Zuko's pacing was annoying Uncle, it was impossible to tell; but it made Zuko feel better to imagine that it was.

He reached the corner again and turned on his heel. Uncle was just sitting on the floor, legs folded, like they hadn't been stuck in this stupid little room for—an hour? Half an hour? It was impossible to tell.

"Ah, there," Uncle said suddenly, and when Zuko looked he was smiling, watching the gap under the door. "Someone is coming."

He'd barely finished the sentence before the door creaked open.

The woman on the other side was robed in green; her hair was done up with jade combs and gold pins and who knew what else, and there were locks of iron-grey in amidst the black. The queen, Zuko thought, and was frozen for a moment—Father would have done something, struck her or spat in her face because she was the enemy, but they were in the middle of her palace in the middle of her city. However honorable, it seemed inescapably unwise.

Uncle did neither. He drew himself to his feet and then bowed low, low as he never had to Father, and smiled. "Your Majesty," he said.

"Really, Iroh?" the queen of Lannang said. "I did not think it had been long enough for you to forget my name." She lifted one hand, held it out, and lying flat in her palm was a Pai Sho tile. A white lotus piece, carved out of marble.

Uncle held his own hand out beside it, the white lotus tile in his palm exactly the same size and shape even though his was old and wooden and rubbed smooth. "Miansun," he said. "It is good to see you."

"Uncle," Zuko said, "I'm starting to think I'm the one who has gone mad. What are you doing?"

"Greeting an old friend," Uncle said, which was less than unhelpful; and Queen Miansun smiled.

"Perhaps we should sit," she said, and with two sharp small motions of her hands she raised two benches out of the stone floor, as easy as breathing.

"We're criminals from the Fire Nation who are shut in a small room with an Earthbender queen," Zuko said. "Why aren't we dead yet?"

"Criminals?" Queen Miansun said. "You've had an exciting time of it since I saw you last, Iroh." She swept around the end of one bench and seated herself, graceful and attentive. "Tell me."

Uncle Iroh glanced back at Zuko, calm, with that infuriating look of forbearance he so often wore. "She isn't going to kill you, nephew," he said. "Sit."

If she were going to kill them, Zuko thought, she could probably do it whether he sat down or not.

He sat.

"The tale would be very long," Iroh said to the queen, "and under other circumstances, I would be happy to stay the week it would take to tell it well. But I am afraid we do not have the time."

"You require shelter?" Queen Miansun said, and Zuko couldn't help but stare at her. She was as mad as Uncle, if she was so willing to harbor fugitives from a nation that already had reason to destroy her. Why would she call attention to herself so? Surely it was simply luck that Father had not killed her already.

"I think that would be unwise," Uncle Iroh said, "though I am grateful beyond telling for the thought. The Fire Nation is already at your doorstep, and I would not bring more trouble than I can help upon a generous friend."

The queen smiled. "But you have need of something," she said, "or you would not have come to me." She looked oddly pleased by the prospect, but surely she knew they had nothing to offer in exchange, no reward or bribe for her. What could she possibly gain by this?

"We hope to continue onward and eastward, to safety in Ba Sing Se." Uncle Iroh spread his hands wide. "There alone we may escape the Fire Nation's grasp."

"And it is a crowded road to Ba Sing Se, these days," the queen filled in, nodding. "Refugees from the south ten years ago, from the east now—always the same story." She paused, considering, painted face carefully expressionless. "But I should think envoys of the queen of Lannang would encounter little trouble."

Zuko blinked. Was she truly proposing to hand over official papers with her seal, to get one stranger and one man she had evidently met before to Ba Sing Se, with only their word and whatever the white lotus tile meant to assure her that they would cause no trouble? It did not seem possible, and yet Uncle was smiling.

"Thank you, Miansun," Uncle said, and the queen stood and touched his shoulder gently.

"It is a little thing," she said. "I wish I could do more."

"I have never been one to disdain the little things," Uncle said, and Zuko couldn't help but roll his eyes.

"No," the queen agreed, and then paused halfway around the bench. "It will take some time to get the papers ready, Iroh—would you like me to have some tea brought?"

"The Avatar," Tomur said, sitting back. "Hard to believe—and yet for exactly that reason it would be foolish to make the claim if you were not. Surely you could compose a likelier-sounding lie."

"Oh, we totally could," Sokka said helpfully.

"Well," Arzigul said. "Maintaining balance in the world is at least as generous a gift as a full pot of rice; we would be poor hosts if we failed to reciprocate." She touched Tomur's elbow. "We have had a good year, my dear. We could spare a sailer."

"A sailer," Tomur said, "and one to sail it, I think. Someone who's scouted a few times, Buyan," for the girl sitting next to Sokka had already stood up hopefully.

"I have," said a boy a little further around the circle, and stood up, too. "I could take them."

"To the edge of the desert in the north, and back," Arzigul said.

"To the edge of the desert in the north and back," the boy confirmed. "It won't be that long a sail from here."

Katara couldn't hold back a grin—that would cut down the time it would take to reach Ba Sing Se, there was no way it couldn't. And they needed every day they could get, if they were going to try to find an eclipse that fell before the comet's return.

"I'll be careful," the boy continued.

"Yeah," Buyan said. "Don't break your arm or anything."

The boy made a face at her, and then turned to them and bowed. "I'm Turhun," he said. "I'll sail you to the north, and from there you can find the road to Ba Sing Se."

Katara stood up, ready to thank him—and then Professor Zei popped up from his seat. "Amazing!" he said. "The Avatar herself—and a Sandbender. There are barely any records on the Sandbenders at the university, it's really quite disgraceful."

"Though, of course," Sokka muttered, "they are not my area of expertise," and Suki, beside him, snorted into her hand.

The lieutenant general was not in the command tent when Yin arrived, but she didn't want to pull anyone aside to go look for him—everyone near by seemed to already have a task of their own, except the messenger who had come along beside her, and she wasn't about to send him running around the camp to look for the man.

So she waited inside the flap, Kiri hitched up and already eating outside, and occupied herself with observation.

She wasn't about to go through his things; but there was no harm in looking at what had been left out where anyone might see it. And, to be honest, there was not much to see. Judging by the tent, the lieutenant general was not a man of extravagant tastes—there was minimal decoration, and most of the space was occupied by a table that was covered with maps and battle plans, little marking-pieces for battalions scattered across the surface. Yin glanced at them, tried to interpret them from the wrong side of the table: the Fire Nation battalions seemed to be spread quite thin, and as small as the green markers were, there were so many of them—

"Apologies," said the man behind her, and he let the tent flap fall shut again behind him. "I did not intend to keep you waiting—poor recompense, when you came so quickly. I am Lieutenant General Kizao."

"No matter," Yin said, waving a hand. Even if she wanted to cause the man difficulties, he clearly had plenty of his own at the moment. "It gave me time to catch my breath. You have orders from General Jingzan?"

"By way of Jingzan, yes," Kizao said, "but originally from the crown princess herself. Jingzan received a messenger hawk with the royal seal."

Yin couldn't help raising her eyebrows. Orders from the royal family were relatively rare, and therefore important when they were given out—no wonder he had sent a messenger so quickly. "For me?" she said.

"For you," Kizao confirmed. "Not personally, of course—but to the nearest fleet commander we would be able to contact, and we knew someone would be coming with reinforcements. Just in time, too," he admitted. "We still have New Ozai, but the rebellion here is—formidable."

Possibly too strong for us, Yin interpreted.

"But that is no longer your concern, now that you have arrived," Kizao said, and crossed to the far side of the table. "I have the scroll itself," he continued, lifting one from the edge of the table and holding it out, "but the contents were described to General Jingzan. You are to depart for Chameleon Bay, in the far east—not to take the coast, only to transport, so confine yourself to the western waters."

Not to take the coast—then they meant her to transport something else, soldiers or equipment. Well, she could not complain; if she'd been sent to a battle, Yin thought wryly, she had no idea which side she would end up firing at, the way she'd been thinking lately.

"Thank you, Lieutenant General," she said formally, and took the scroll—it felt oddly light against her fingers, for something so important. "It is my honor to serve our nation."

"And mine," Kizao said, and bowed.