Thanks, as always, for new faves/follows since the last chapter! I'm posting this so fast, I wouldn't have thought anyone would have time. :P This chapter took an obscenely long time to beat into shape when I first wrote it—you guys are just lucky you don't have to wait. I apologize in advance to anyone with a genuinely firm grasp of the laws of probability; teatime with Toph and Iroh was such a delightful moment in the show that I couldn't bear to skip doing an alternate version of it, even though it's a little ridiculous to have them meet by chance in this scenario. Enjoy!
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Chapter 11: The Dai Li
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The first time they'd gone to the Ministry of Cultural Authority, Katara had been too amazed to mind how it had ended. Long Feng had listened to everything they'd had to tell him without judgment, had apologized prettily for the fact that he could make no promises just yet, and had told them to come back in a few days. It had all seemed to be going perfectly: fine, the delay hadn't been exactly what Katara had been hoping for, but they'd come back and he'd take them to the king and everything would be fine.
Except they had, and he hadn't, and it wasn't. Katara sighed.
She'd been expecting Joo Dee and the carriage and the walls, this time, and the lovely words Long Feng had used couldn't cover up the fact that he'd used them to say no. Again. And Joo Dee had smiled her pleasant smile and ushered them back outside, and now here they were in the carriage again, no further than they'd been this morning for all the distance they'd gone.
"It's only the second time," Aang said, hovering half out the carriage door so that he could look her in the face. "And—and probably the king really is busy—"
"Too busy to crush the Fire Nation?" Katara muttered. "Nobody's that busy."
She couldn't convey the real extent of her frustration without drawing attention; Joo Dee was in the carriage with them, telling Yue something about the street they were on which Yue was very courteously pretending to care about. But Aang seemed to get the point: he grimaced, his downturned mouth an apologetic glimmer in the growing dark.
"Well, kings and queens must be sometimes," he said, "or else the war would never have lasted this long to begin with."
Behind him somewhere there was a loud sound—Katara jerked in the carriage window and then shoved the curtain further open. Joo Dee had had everything closed up when she'd come to get them from the university; but what passed for winter in Ba Sing Se barely chilled Katara's fingertips, and it was plenty warm in the carriage. The first thing she'd done had been to yank her side window open. Oh, there was snow in the streets—or in the Middle Ring, there was. They hadn't crossed the wall back down yet, and the Upper Ring seemed to have been swept completely clean. But even in the Middle Ring it was only up to Katara's ankles.
And there wouldn't be more tonight: it was clear, the sky almost black except for lingering blue in the west—and a shower of brilliant red lights in the north, over the city.
"Fireworks!" Sokka said.
"Ah—yes," Joo Dee said, smiling. As if she ever wasn't, Katara thought grumpily. "Spring Festival celebrations in Ba Sing Se are famed throughout the Earth Kingdoms—"
"Spring Festival?" Katara said blankly. How could it be, already? She'd known it was getting late in the year, and she'd told herself again and again to remember that the sun would never go away—that there would be no fires, set and kept burning to guide it back. But something in her couldn't help protesting. Spring Festival couldn't come until after that—until the day there was finally a dawn again, and you knew spring was really coming—
Homesickness welled up in her as fast and strong as a wave—and as hard to stop. For a moment, she wanted so fiercely to go home that it made her eyes sting, made tears well up between her eyelashes so that the fireworks blurred into a smudge of colors against the dark sky. She hated this city—hated Joo Dee and her smile, Long Feng and his beautiful excuses, and, more than anything, this stupid invisible king who was nothing like Katara; who could save the world, so easily, but couldn't be bothered to.
She didn't want anyone to see, but there was Aang on one side and everyone else on the other. Katara put her head down against the little windowsill and closed her eyes.
"Look," said Suki, touching Katara's shoulder, and when Katara looked up her vision was mercifully clear, the tears all blinked away. She was pretty sure Suki couldn't see anything, and even more sure when Suki just smiled at her and motioned to the other window. "This one's a dragon." The expression on her face was rapt; and Katara looked at her instead of at the sky, and then around the carriage.
"Well, sort of a dragon," Sokka said, sounding faintly judgmental, and across from him Toph huffed loudly and crossed her arms.
"Wow, yeah, they're so pretty," Toph droned.
"They sound almost as nice—like music," Yue said, reaching over to touch Toph's elbow. "The bang when they start, and then the sound when they fly—"
"Screechy," Toph declared, "like, worst guqin in the world," but her arms came uncrossed.
Katara took one deep breath and then another, and looked back out her own window, where Aang was still floating hopefully. "New year," he said. "New start. It's not too late, Katara."
Katara leaned her face on her hand and watched a fountain of blue lights spin through the air. "I hope not," she said quietly.
Aang reached out like he meant to touch her hand and then made a face at himself. "I mean it," he said earnestly, and that made Katara snort suddenly—as though that were the problem, as though Aang had ever said anything he didn't mean.
"What's so funny?" Sokka said, and then his face changed; even in the dimness Katara could see his eyes go wide. "I mean, uh—unless that was just a cough. I'm sure that was just a cough. You aren't going to—die, are you? Like—"
"Just a cough," Katara said, before he could try to work out another Aang-related code word to throw in.
"I bet you guys could see the show real well from one of the university roofs," Toph said. "Plus then if you got too annoying I could shove you off."
Yue laughed, and Suki shrugged. "I guess it wouldn't hurt," Suki said. "I think we could stay up for a little while."
"Yeah, hey, night off from trying to save the world," Sokka said, and threw his hands in the air. "Who's with me?"
Katara glanced back out the window: Aang was looking at her hopefully. "Not too late," she said.
Louder than she'd meant to: "Oh, fine," Sokka said, "get all responsible on me," and Katara couldn't have explained anyway with Joo Dee two seats away, so it was probably for the best that she was giggling too hard to even try.
It was difficult to enter Chameleon Bay with any kind of subtlety, even though the Fire Nation no longer guarded the strait; so Tan Khai did not try. It was hardly necessary—they did not need to be inside the bay to see it. The smoke of Fire Nation warships was like a vast thundercloud over the water.
Ominous, Mizan thought. Not to her, she had spent too much time serving underneath such billows to see them as anything but what they were. But the winds over the bay would carry that smoke over half the kingdoms; and Earth citizens would know it for what it was. There was only one thing north of the bay that would demand such resources.
"So many," Isani murmured beside her.
"They want to be certain," said Mizan. "This time they do not mean to fail."
"Last time they did not mean to fail, either," and the tone with which it was said told Mizan Tan Khai had said it even before Mizan turned around.
"They seem to be trying a little harder," said Mizan.
Tan Khai pursed her lips and said nothing.
"But if they are sailing up the river," Isani said, "they are not in the bay." She had the spyglass in her hand—her vision was much better than Mizan's—and she turned it toward the river's mouth. "The locks have changed the river; it may have had a delta once, but they have built up new banks to narrow it—to deepen it."
"A good chokepoint," said Tan Khai, and her tone was only grudgingly pleased but there was something like a spark in her eyes.
Mizan cast a glance over the rail. There were three ships alongside theirs and seven more behind, but that was all. After a great deal of arguing, Mizan had been permitted to take nearly all of the captured Fire Nation vessels with her, for they were faster by far than the pirates' Earth ships, and time was of the essence. But even if they'd had the use of the handful they had left behind, they would not have had much of a fleet. "Not so good that we will not need more ships," she said.
Tan Khai laughed, loud and sharp, deliberate. "Ah, yes," she said, "the other half of the plan," and she snorted. "If any Earth kingdom agrees to lend their ships to you, I will eat my boots."
"Your boots are safe," said Mizan mildly, and did her best not to smile. "I will not be doing the asking."
"Surely you do not expect them to send you their admirals unprompted," said Tan Khai.
"No, that would be a bit much to leave to fate," Mizan agreed. "But who in the Earth Kingdoms would trust a yellow-eyed woman, coming to them in a Fire Nation ship? You yourself have neatly demonstrated the difficulties."
Tan Khai was difficult, stubborn, humorless, irritating—but not stupid, much as Mizan had occasionally wished otherwise. "You think I will do it for you?" she said.
"I think you want this mission to succeed," said Mizan. "I think you can imagine no greater disaster for the Earth Kingdoms than the fall of Ba Sing Se. I think you know that the fleet they are sending up the river is the largest fleet of Fire Nation ships that anyone has ever seen, and I think you know that even if we sought to capture the smallest bay in the world, to hold the narrowest of all rivers, it would be best done with more than eleven ships."
Tan Khai stared at her for a long moment, face blank and still, and then looked away and sighed. "One day I will cut out your tongue," she said, "so that I will once again be able to do as I please, knowing there will be no one left in the world who will be able to convince me to do otherwise."
"I knew you could be made to see reason," Mizan said, sweetly.
Suki woke early; she always had, at home, and even with all the windows shuttered here, no creeping sun or too-loud birds, it was a difficult habit to break. Toph was a noble family's daughter who had never been asked to rise with the dawn, and Sokka rarely woke earlier than he had to. Katara had woken first now and then, but since their second meeting with Long Feng she had slept the sleep of someone exhausted from worrying and waiting. And Yue—Yue wasn't used to there being a dawn this time of year. She had told Suki a little bit about the celebrations up north, the great hunt on the last day of real light and the feasts that came after, everybody stuffing themselves and then sleeping until they woke up enough to eat some more.
Suki wouldn't have believed it, except she'd seen for herself how low the sun got. They'd left before midwinter so Katara could talk to Avatar Roku, but even that early the sun had turned lazy, never climbing more than a handswidth from the horizon. The winters Suki was used to had varied with the sea, sometimes mild and sometimes raging; but there was always a sunrise, and Suki had always woken with it.
She took her fans out into the corridor and practiced. There wasn't really a better way to use the time with everybody else asleep, and the need to be quiet forced her to stay light on her feet, to concentrate. The exercises were calming, almost meditative, and she couldn't have said how long she'd been doing them when at last she heard voices.
Suki didn't rush herself; she finished the sequence and then closed her fans with a snap. The voices were louder than they had been at first, she thought—somebody had opened the door.
"There are some days when I think maybe I could get this fan thing down pretty good," Sokka said, "and there are some days where you do that and I'm pretty sure I might as well be a toddler."
He sounded hilariously aggrieved, and Suki couldn't help laughing. "Say that again after I tell you about the time I was trying to practice with Mikari and I hit myself in the face."
Sokka raised his eyebrows, disbelieving.
"No joke!" Suki said. "I gave myself a bloody nose. You might feel clumsy, but I'm telling you, there are heights you have yet to reach." She was close enough to bump him with her elbow, and did; the stone floor was cold against her bare feet, but he was as warm as always.
"Well, hey, lead on, o master," he said, and winked.
Everybody else was still draped across their beds—or Toph was, at least, on her belly with her feet kicking lazily. Katara had rolled over to face her, and Yue was sitting up, back perfectly straight, like she didn't know how to sit any other way.
"I just don't understand why he's not doing anything," Katara was saying plaintively; Yue was reaching out as though to pat her on the shoulder, and both of them looked over with wide eyes when Toph snorted.
"Oh, come on," Toph said. "It's classic! There could be a dozen reasons he'd make it take longer—to make himself seem important, or because he's doing the same thing to five other people who want to talk to the king. Must be great to have 'Oh, I'm afraid the Avatar takes precedence' to use as an excuse." She made her voice low and ingratiating, Long Feng almost exactly, and spread her hands out in a parody of apology.
"But," Katara said, and then couldn't seem to figure out what to say next.
"I knew you guys came from the middle of nowhere," Toph said, "but, wow. Do you dance in a circle and hold hands and sing songs all day?"
"Actually, we're mostly pretty busy," Sokka said, dry, "hunting down angry animals three times our size and killing them."
Toph made a face in his general direction, and then shrugged. "I got lucky," she said. "I was pretty much useless for matchmaking and stuff, they mostly left me out of it. But I still had to go to all the dinners, all the operas—sit in the family pavilion during festivals, that kind of thing. And it's never as simple as it looks. Everybody wants to get something from you; or wants to keep you from getting something; or wants to look like they're helping you get something when really they're trying to get it for themselves."
"And which do you think Long Feng is?" said Sokka.
Toph pursed her lips. "I don't know," she said, "but I don't like him. He feels oogy."
"Oogy," Yue repeated, leadingly.
Toph held out her hands. "Look, I can tell when people are lying because it makes them nervous; their hearts speed up, they breathe faster, it's like they're tickling me and expecting me not to notice. Usually. But there are some people—like Princess Azula, or this Long Feng guy—it's like they've done it so often their bodies don't know the difference anymore. He feels the same way no matter what he's saying, and he's not nervous or afraid or even sorry to keep telling you no."
At that, Katara flopped over onto her back with a sigh, and Suki's heart broke a tiny bit for the expression on her face.
"There has to be something we can do," Katara said. "Something we haven't tried yet—some way to speed things up or—or pressure him—"
"Perhaps the university president," said Professor Zei.
Suki blinked at Katara, who blinked back and then sat up, twisting around to look at the door—the door Suki and Sokka had left open, the door by which Professor Zei was standing and inclining his head apologetically.
"Forgive me," he added, "I only meant to tell you they will be serving breakfast in the university halls soon, if you would like to eat with the students. I did not—I could not help but overhear."
"Do you think that would help?" Suki said.
Professor Zei shrugged. "It would not hurt," he said. "The post of university president is highly esteemed—dating back to the founding of the university, of course, when the nineteenth king formally—well." He cleared his throat. "Surely it would do no harm to inquire."
Sokka looked suddenly torn. "But, uh—"
"We won't have to skip breakfast," Katara said, rolling her eyes.
"No, indeed—she often eats in the Hall of Plentiful Delights," said Professor Zei. "It is not far away at all."
"The Hall of Plentiful Delights?" Sokka repeated, grinning, and clapped his hands together briskly. "Well, all right, then: let's go find her!"
The bao was fresh, not yesterday's leftovers, and Li Chen leaned in to breathe in the smell before piling her plate high. She already had a bowl of noodles and broth, and she balanced it all carefully as she maneuvered back to a table.
Half her department heads thought she was out of her mind for eating in the student halls instead of in her office—her grand, thick-walled, sunlit office, which also happened to be incredibly cold in the morning, not to mention silent as death until Wu Shou arrived. In all honesty, eating in the student halls was the hour of Li Chen's day that she loved best. The life she led was in many ways not unlike a war, and she a general; and every student who sat in those halls, chatting and arguing, reading aloud to each other as they slurped their noodles—every one was a victory. She had fought and won them all, and who could blame her if she wished to bask in it a little? For all the forces arrayed against her in this city, there were students in the university halls; the books they read were missing no pages, the scrolls they studied went uncensored. Few true generals ate their breakfasts as contentedly as Jian Li Chen.
The tables in the Hall of Plentiful Delights were long and narrow, the current favored style in the city—only Lower Ring families ate at round tables these days. Li Chen stood by to let a student pass at the corner of one table, and let her gaze rove for a moment; this was how she discovered that today's breakfast would perhaps be less contented than she had hoped.
She could not see the girl from where she was standing, not at first; she could not see any of them except Zei Wenhui, but she saw him and knew at once that they were there. Li Chen had made a careful study of the habits of her staff and had forgotten none of it in Zei Wenhui's absence: she had seen the man in the dining halls at an actual mealtime only twice before, and one of those times his office had literally been on fire. Zei Wenhui thought of the university dining halls as things that happened to people who did not have enough research to do, and might have starved to death years ago but for the servant Li Chen had assigned to take meals to his office at regular intervals.
But he was in the dining hall today, at a reasonable hour for eating, and that meant something unusual was happening. There was a chance it did not have to do with the small retinue of unlikely companions Wenhui had brought with him, but that chance was tragically miniscule. Everyone who had set foot on university grounds in the last two weeks knew that the Avatar had come to Ba Sing Se, even if they did not know why; and Li Chen knew why.
Or at least she had made an educated guess. She had not become university president, had not lasted as long as she had, by being a fool: she knew that the Avatar had gone to the astronomy department; had learned, in ten minutes' conversation with Dae Hyun, what it was that she had asked for; had been told within the hour each time the Dai Li had come and ferried the Avatar away.
Li Chen felt sorry for the girl, in some ways. The Avatar had dodged the Dai Li so cleanly at the outer wall, coming into the city with Wenhui—but she had not known to keep dodging, had lost whatever advantage she had begun with and had tangled herself in deeper besides. And now—
Now Li Chen could help her, but was there any reason to believe she would succeed once helped? Li Chen had been locked in a delicate balance with the Dai Li for years, and could, if she chose, tip that balance; but it would have to be done at the right moment, for the right purpose, or it would be for nothing. The Dai Li would waste no time in eliminating her if she chose her moment wrongly—as she would waste no time in eliminating Long Feng, if she chose her moment rightly. Balance, Li Chen thought, and smiled wryly down at her bao.
She looked up again, and now she could see them all. The rumors working their way through the university were confused, as rumors often are, and Li Chen could understand why; the girl with the white hair was striking, noticeable, and it was natural to assume that the Avatar would be striking, noticeable—the Avatar! But Dae Hyun had told Li Chen that it was the other Water Tribe girl, the dark-haired one, and Li Chen watched her as Wenhui led her nearer.
Compared to the white-haired girl, she was ordinary-looking—the blue eyes were unusual in Ba Sing Se, technically, but only because there had been no one from the Water Tribe in the city for so many years. She gazed around the Hall of Plentiful Delights with interest, the picture of a country girl on her first trip to the city, and she said something to the boy beside her and then laughed at whatever he said in reply.
She caught sight of Li Chen soon enough—how could she not, when Li Chen was standing so still amid the eddying current of students, and looking straight at her besides? Li Chen watched her face change: curiosity swept across it, and then understanding, as she guessed who Li Chen must be; and then a pure and unforced hope, so painfully obvious that Li Chen wanted to avert her eyes. How had the girl lived this long with so undefended a face? Surely the Dai Li could see every thought that crossed her mind. It would be so, so easy to help her—and so great a mistake.
Wenhui was only a few steps away, now, and already starting to bow; Li Chen smiled at him and inclined her head in response. "I take it your trip was a success, Professor," Li Chen said, and whatever formal greeting Wenhui had been composing tumbled away somewhere and left him standing there, beaming helplessly.
"Yes, indeed!" he said. "A very great success, very great—of course it took longer than I had hoped, I assume you received my notifications—"
"The university board was happy to grant you an extension," Li Chen said. "All eight times." She let her tone get a little dry, but it was quite true. Zei Wenhui was an excellent writer and researcher, and did his best work in the field; it had not been hard to convince the board that he was best left where he was. And it had paid off: anything at all from the archives of Wan Shi Tong was bound to be invaluable and one-of-a-kind, and Wenhui was, in his own field, a hopeless completist. Li Chen wondered just how much he had managed to bring back, and how many books he would get out of it. Perhaps it was time to add a few more shelves to the university library.
"Excellent!" said Wenhui. "I had hoped so, but of course any replies you might have made did not reach me in the desert—"
A throat was cleared somewhere behind him—the boy, Li Chen guessed, and Wenhui stopped himself mid-sentence and smiled at Li Chen apologetically.
"I beg your pardon—if I might introduce to you—"
"The Avatar," Li Chen said, before Wenhui could finish, and she turned her gaze to the girl.
"Katara," the girl said, and bowed, so low her braid slid over her shoulder and nearly touched the floor.
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It was as Li Chen had expected.
She managed to convince them all to go get trays of their own, so that at least they would be able to eat while they talked to her—their time would not be wholly wasted. They described their journey in bits and pieces over bao and noodles, and Li Chen nodded in all the right places. The library had been their inspiration, she learned; it was Wenhui's fault, of course it was, and Dae Hyun had given them a date, and perhaps the spirit world was truly aiding them or perhaps it was simply the cycles of time. There had been such an eclipse much earlier in the war, Li Chen knew, that had caught the Fire Nation wholly off-guard, and judging by Dae Hyun's results there might well be another—or there might not.
So much uncertainty—and they had come a long way on uncertainty, stumbling from one coincidence to the next, but no one could expect Li Chen to do the same. A general, she thought to herself, eating in her hall of victories; and she would not trust the fate of her war to uncertainties.
"Well," she said to them aloud, "I can certainly lodge a request alongside your own; but I am afraid the Dai Li do not favor the university, in general." Both halves of this sentence were true—it was only combining them, as though one were related to the other, that made the whole misleading.
Katara's face fell into disappointed lines; she looked lost. How different it must be from the southern ice, Li Chen thought, when speaking to the nearest leader had meant she must duck into the same igloo as her grandmother! The Avatar had traveled halfway across the world and halfway back, and now she was in the same city as the very king of Ba Chang, and could not reach him.
"There may be other options," Li Chen said, her tone carefully comforting. "I will investigate."
"Well, it was worth a try," Sokka said, patting Katara on the shoulder before he rose to refill his tray.
"It was," Katara agreed, smiling reassuringly at Wenhui—of course it had been his idea, Li Chen thought, and not a bad one, except—
Except the Avatar had already made too many mistakes, and Li Chen simply could not afford to join her.
"I will do my best," Li Chen said warmly, and wished with gentle regret that it hadn't had to be a lie.
The breakfast had been pretty good, Toph thought, even if it hadn't gotten them anywhere—and frankly she didn't think it was a big surprise, no matter what Katara had been hoping for. Toph had the impression that the Dai Li didn't make things easy for anybody but the Dai Li; maybe a noble family from the Upper Ring would be able to make a big enough fuss to get them past Long Feng and his stupid slick apologies, but the whole problem was that they couldn't get into the Upper Ring in the first place.
So: nothing had changed. They were still stuck here, waiting for Long Feng to summon them again just so he could smile and bow and give them a whole new excuse; and, fine, the university wasn't a bad place, but Toph hated waiting.
She considered her options on the way back from the Hall of Plentiful Delights. Sokka and Suki were out—they were already arranging practice time with their war fans somewhere behind her, which was sometimes entertaining, but more often resulted in Toph holding back the urge to vomit while their idiot heartbeats skittered under her toes. Bleh. And Katara—if Toph knew Katara even a little bit, she was going to head back and find somewhere to mope about what a terrible Avatar she was and how sad it made her.
Toph felt around for Yue's careful even steps, and then reached out until she found something not unlike an elbow. "What are you going to do when we get back?"
With her hand on Yue's arm, she could feel Yue shrug. "I have not worked with my pike in some time," Yue said. "Perhaps Sokka and Suki would permit me to join them in practice."
Maybe they were less ridiculous when you could see them, Toph thought, but somehow she doubted it.
Well, she wasn't going to hang out with the professor unless she had something to stop up her ears with, and Katara's invisible dead friend was a tough option to work with. The university was getting pretty boring, anyway, and they'd hardly ever been out in the city without Joo Dee smiling over their shoulders.
It wasn't hard to get away, once everybody was off doing their thing; and it wasn't hard to shuffle a chunk of the university wall aside, either. It really was a good wall, well-built—definitely stable enough to not fall on her head when she bent a piece out.
The wall between the Middle Ring and the Lower Ring was way thicker, so Toph climbed it instead—it was easy to feel when the guards at the top were coming around, and she could push her hands into the cool stone as easily as if it were water. The Middle Ring was so boring; and Professor Zei had talked about the Lower Ring in exactly the same way her parents had talked about Gaoling's lower districts. As far as Toph could tell, what being a "lower" anywhere actually meant was that there was stuff to do, and that people who lied to you didn't expect you to go along with it if you noticed.
Professor Zei had kind of made it seem like the Lower Ring was wall-to-wall criminals, but honestly it sounded pretty normal when Toph lowered herself off the wall on the other side. Sure, there was some angry yelling mixed in, but what it was mixed in with was the usual stuff: people selling things on the sides of the street, friends stopping in the road to talk, skinny little boys and girls running messages for a little pocket change, carriages and carts drawn by squawking ostrich horses or groaning badger oxen. Everything was dirtier and more crowded, but that just made it easier to blend in comfortably.
Toph walked down the street, dodging everybody who couldn't be bothered to dodge her, and letting the hum of a hundred thousand people settle into her bones. She should probably have stayed; Katara still needed help with her Earthbending, after all, and making her angry would have stopped her from feeling sorry for herself all day. It was just so hard—so hard to wait around, so hard to do nothing. Toph had left with Katara in the first place because she wanted to do something better than just bending pebbles around in circles and smiling at people she didn't like, and now—now it felt like she was going nowhere just as thoroughly as she had been at home.
She stopped almost in the middle of the street, making a face at herself—what a stupid thing to think! She was half a continent away from home, she'd crossed a desert and a sea and half a dozen of these stupid walls, and she was teaching the Avatar to shove boulders around like they were toy blocks. It was just that feeling, that same feeling of—of powerlessness, meaninglessness, being stuck repeating the same thing over and over not because it would get her anywhere but because somebody else wanted it that way. She hated it.
"Excuse me—are you all right?"
She'd stopped pretty suddenly, and nearly everybody was just winding their way around her and minding their own business, except this one guy. He'd stopped a few steps away from her, a matching stillness in the rush of traffic in the Lower Ring, and he was just—standing there, looking at her.
"Fine," she said, but it sounded kind of funny coming out, and judging by the way the guy didn't move, he didn't believe it.
"I don't suppose you have a little time to spare?" he said, gentle. "I've been looking for someone to test a tea on, you see."
"A tea?" Toph said.
"Yes," the guy said, nodding. "My nephew has no head for teas; if I gave him a cup of the finest rock tea from the southern mountains, he would tell me it was hot leaf juice and mean it. But you look to me like a person of discerning tastes."
Weird guy, Toph thought, but he didn't seem dangerous. And he wasn't wrong—she'd drunk a lot of really good tea in her life. She didn't care about it very much, but she knew her teas. Besides, it wasn't like this would be a bigger waste of her time than sitting around the university had been.
"Well, I should, because I am," she said, and the guy laughed.
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He led her down the street to a little tea shop—"Welcome to Pao Family Tea House," he said gravely, and waved her inside.
He worked there, apparently, and he'd been out on the street using his midmorning break to inspect some of the teas for sale nearby.
"I have been working on this blend for several days," he explained, shuffling back and forth behind the counter, "but it still does not taste quite right."
It was sort of calming, to sit there by the counter and listen to the bubbling teapots, the soft hiss of steam—at this hour, there was only one other person in the tea shop, and she was sitting all the way over by the door nursing a single cooling cup.
"So," the guy said, when he had finished setting up his blend to brew. "I do not mean to pry, but you looked like you had something on your mind."
Toph hesitated a little, but—it didn't matter what she said, did it? There wasn't anybody to hear her except Weird Tea Shop Guy and maybe the lady in the corner. "Has—has there ever been a thing that you knew really, really needed to happen, but it was up to somebody else to decide whether it happened or not, and the only thing you could do was wait for them to pick? Even though it was really important, and it was really obvious to you that they needed to pick this way, but they just wouldn't do it?"
The guy was quiet for a moment. "Once or twice," he said at last, light.
Toph sighed and put her head down against the counter. "How did you keep from strangling them?" she asked her knees.
"I know it can be very hard to wait," the guy said, "but sometimes you must."
"Maybe if you think they're going to pick right," Toph said, "and they just need some time, but what if—what if you don't trust them? What if you're pretty sure they're going to pick wrong just to make things harder for everybody, and you can't stop them—you can't even make them pick faster so you can start fixing everything they're going to mess up when they pick wrong?"
"This sounds like a very complicated situation," the guy said mildly. "Good thing our tea is ready."
Toph listened to him lift the pot, to the clink of the cups and the soft rush of pouring water, and then the guy slid one cup halfway across the counter and she picked it up. It smelled pretty good, as experimental blends offered to you by guys you'd just met in the street went; she took a little sip and let it slide over her tongue, rolled it around in her mouth and let the flavor seep in.
"Give me some time to think about it," she said, setting her teacup down and inclining her head toward it.
"Of course," the guy said, gracious, and then leaned in a little over the counter. "And as to your problem: if there is nothing you can do to sway their choice, and nothing you can do to hurry them—then you have your answer. Do nothing."
Toph slammed her hands into the edge of the counter; behind her, she heard the lady by the door startle, her cup clattering against her table. "That's your advice? Are you kidding?"
The guy didn't flinch. "If you can have no hand in the outcome," he said, as calm as ever, "then this fight is not yours to win or lose." He leaned back and shifted—spreading his hands, Toph guessed. "Why waste your energy worrying over it when there is nothing you can do? Better to turn your thoughts to other matters, wouldn't you say?"
Toph opened her mouth and couldn't decide what to say with it; she huffed instead, and then reached out for her abandoned cup and took another sip of tea. It really was pretty good, but the guy was right, there was something a little weird about it. "You're just trying to get me to tell you what I think of the tea," she said at last.
The guy laughed. "It is only reasonable that, having set your complicated situation aside, you will need something else to occupy your thoughts," he said. "If you should happen to choose my tea, I would consider it a great honor."
Toph took another swallow. "The finish is too sweet, I think," she said, and set her cup down. "So that's all I can do? Accept it?"
The guy took a sip from his own cup. "Mm, yes!" he said, sounding pleased. "I see what you mean. The flavor in this blend is not balanced correctly. I will have to put together a new batch with a different blend."
Toph made a face. "Was that secret advice that only sounded like it was about tea?"
She couldn't tell for certain, not without touching him, but she was pretty sure the guy was smiling. "It would not be a poor model to consider," he said. "Sometimes it is best to set what can no longer be changed aside, and seek—alternatives."
"Don't wait," Toph translated. "Or—keep waiting, but try to figure out another way to get it done?"
"You cannot spend your life waiting for other people to finish making decisions for you," the guy agreed. "Especially when they cannot be trusted to make good ones. You must try to make them for yourself."
Toph swirled the last of her tea around in her cup, thinking. Going around things wasn't something she spent a lot of time doing, not when she could punch through them; but this guy kind of made it sound like going around things was punching through them, in its own way.
She swallowed the last of her tea and set the cup down on the counter with a clink. "I should thank your nephew," she said.
The guy went still on the other side of the counter. "Oh?"
"I'm guessing you didn't get this good at giving advice without some practice," Toph said. "Does he make a lot of mistakes?"
"The mistakes were not all his," the guy said, a little quietly.
"Well, either way," Toph said, "he's lucky. If he doesn't appreciate you, tell him from me that he's an idiot." She stepped away from the counter far enough to bow a little. "Thank you," she said, and poked a finger into the sash at her waist. "How much for the tea?"
"Please, please," the guy said, "you did me a kindness by tasting it for me."
Toph grinned. She was starting to get this guy, sort of. "I think you did me the kindness by asking me to," she said, but she didn't push. "Thank you for—for what you said."
"Of course," the guy said, gently, and then paused for a moment. "Are you in a very great hurry?"
Toph thought about it. "Actually," she said slowly, "I'm kind of taking today off."
"Well! I would consider it a second kindness if you would stay for another cup," the guy said. "Your only tea today should not be my poor experiment. What do you say?"
"... Are you sure?" Toph said. It wasn't quite what she'd meant to say; but the longer she stood there, the more appealing it was: no Dai Li, no Long Feng, no world-saving, just—a seat at a quiet tea counter.
The guy laughed and there was a shuffle of sandaled feet against a floor, a clinking of ceramics. "Sharing tea with a fascinating stranger," he said, "is one of life's true delights."
"If you say so," Toph said, skeptical, but she felt herself smile as she sat back down. "You better make me something really good, though."
"I expect I will come up with something," the guy said.
Joo Dee received the summons late in the day. She had been quite busy all afternoon, thoroughly reviewing the background and family connections of a merchant who wished to relocate to the Upper Ring—there were questions about some of his second and third cousins, so if approved he would have to be watched for several years, which was a commitment of resources that would have to be carefully considered. She was not displeased to leave the dizzying stack of files behind.
The walk to the Office of the Grand Secretariat had become a sort of meditative routine for her, she had done it so many times; she concentrated on calming herself as she walked, breathing deeply, letting her frustration with unclear notations and illegible surveillance entries slide away. It was always best to meet Long Feng with a clear mind.
He looked up when she entered, waited without moving as she bowed appropriately low, and when she straightened up again he met her eyes and tilted his head inquiringly. "The Avatar is a problem," he said, his tone offhand, as though it were a thought exercise of the sort she had so often faced in training. "Do you agree?"
Joo Dee considered it carefully, considered her answer even more carefully. When Long Feng was in this mood, phrasing was everything. "The Avatar—could become a problem," she said at last. "She permitted herself to be turned away a second time, but may not be so willing again."
Long Feng sat back and looked at her. "Options," he said.
Joo Dee began with the most obvious choice. "Kill her," she said. "A permanent solution, and one with tempting corollaries; but there is no guarantee that an Earth Avatar would be born within the borders of Ba Chang, and far too many people would notice and investigate her untimely death. Ultimately inadvisable."
Long Feng looked away for a long moment, face blank; he was tempted, Joo Dee thought. But then he brought his gaze back to her and nodded, sighing a little through his nose. "Agreed," he admitted.
"Remove her," Joo Dee offered next. "Her and her companions. Something relatively quiet—drug their food in the evening, perhaps, and then carry them from the city in the night and forbid them re-entry. A poor option; they are unlikely to accept this fate with grace, and their disappearance will be as readily noticed by their friends within the city as if they had been killed. Also inadvisable."
"Agreed," Long Feng said, and this time there was no hesitation.
"Talk to her," Joo Dee said, and hoped it was not obvious that this was the choice she favored. This assignment had become a tremendous strain. Not because she felt sympathy for the girl—she did, of course, but the best agents of the Dai Li were always the most sympathetic. It was easier to control people when you understood them: when you could step into their shoes and see what moved them, what they feared, what they wanted. Sympathy was a skill to be cultivated.
No, it had become a strain because she had begun to fear that no one else had reached the same level of understanding. The methods she had been instructed to use were tailored to Middle and Upper Ring aristocrats, who—who knew the rules, for lack of a better way to say it. Who had spent their lives learning to be silent, to agree, to do as they were told. Oh, the higher noble families pushed, now and again, but their concerns tended toward the petty, the easily resolved; none of them had ever decided they wished to make the king go to war. They knew the bounds of the game and how it was played, and it would not occur to any of them to overturn the board.
The same could not be said of a peasant girl from the clans of the southern ice.
"Talk to her?" Long Feng repeated, eyebrows raised.
"She is the Avatar," Joo Dee said. "She understands responsibility, duty, the preservation of balance—all the things that drive us. If it were laid out for her in terms she could understand—that we do as we do for the sake of the city, that we refuse to countenance loss of lives or loss of tradition—" Joo Dee broke off and spread her hands. "Surely these are things a daughter of the Southern Water Tribe could not argue."
"Possible," Long Feng conceded, but his tone was not warm. The idea did not please him, Joo Dee thought, and she inclined her head to him and kept her eyes down.
"Intimidate her," Joo Dee said, another option added to the list, and when she looked up again, Long Feng's gaze was intent.
"Wait for her to come to us again?" he said. Skeptical, but the interest in his eyes was obvious; he was poking holes now because this plan pleased him, because he wanted her to tell him that they could be patched.
Far be it from her to displease the Grand Secretary.
"It is easier done here, that is true," she said, "but she will come whenever we ask it. Send me; I will tell her that her petition has been approved at last, that she and her companions must complete a final security check and then they will be taken to see the king. She will come." There were risks; fear made some people cowards, but it made others angry, and the southern ice surely did not teach cowardice to its daughters. But she was only one girl, and the whole of the Ministry of Cultural Authority was against her, the highest and thickest of walls in a city that prided itself on them. What could she hope to do to them, here in their own halls?
Long Feng looked across his desk at her and smiled, slow and satisfied. "Yes," he said. "Yes, it shows promise. But—an escort, I think, for the Avatar. To take her directly from the university grounds. Surely that would only be appropriate."
Ah, yes—it doubled as a chance to strike out at the university, to remove the Avatar from their grip by the Avatar's own choice. No wonder the idea appealed to Long Feng so much.
"And," he added, "of course I would so love to give her the good news myself."
"Of course, Grand Secretary," Joo Dee said, and bowed.