Thanks as usual for all new follows/faves, for this fic and for the prequel; and apologies again for the delay! Something came up Monday and I wasn't able to post this as planned. :P I'll be out of town at the end of this week, so the last chapter won't be up until Monday the 19th, but this one and the next one are the longest chapters to date, so hopefully it won't actually feel like much of a wait. (They were originally outlined as a single chapter, and then I got to the midway point and already had nearly 25k, which meant it was time to give in and split them into two!) Anyway: enjoy. :D
.*.
Chapter 13: Beneath the Surface
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"There are three which still need widening," said the Chang Da Fourth Rank, bowing. "But that will be easy enough to take care of today; so you may tell the Grand Secretary that all is made ready, and by the time you have done so, it will be true."
Under other circumstances, Joo Dee would have considered it reckless optimism, risky—to tell Long Feng a thing was true when it was not, hoping he would not find out, had to be the very definition of risk. But the Dai Li who were working away below them were skilled Earthbenders all, the best of the best, and what Chang Da Fourth Rank described would not take them very long at all. By the time Joo Dee had climbed back out of the catacombs and retraced her path to the Ministry of Cultural Authority, they would be finished. Unless perhaps there were an earthquake, but in that case Long Feng would have greater concerns.
Still, Joo Dee thought, Chang Da Fourth Rank should not acquire the habit of taking their duty to the Grand Secretary lightly. She fixed him with a flat and disapproving stare as he straightened out of his bow, and waited for him to lower his eyes uncomfortably before she said, "Very well," and turned away.
.*.
Joo Dee had not visited the catacombs often, for most of her time with the Ministry of Cultural Authority—she had not had any reason to. At first she had been too lowly ranked to deal with prisoners; and then had come the siege, the Dragon of the West, and after that she had been too highly ranked to be called in for anything less than a grave offense. The catacombs were not for grave offenders; they were for a sort of middle ground, for undesirables who were too important to simply vanish, or who might know something useful but were not in the end important enough to be held at a Ministry building. And no one taken to the catacombs stayed long. Only long enough for details to be worked out, paperwork to be completed—for the wrinkle they had caused in the fabric of the city to be smoothed, before they were moved to an interrogation camp for the long term.
But these days she could have navigated the catacombs with her eyes shut, she had walked them so many times. For all that might be said of Long Feng, good or ill, no one would ever accuse him of lacking thoroughness.
And what the Dai Li had done—thoroughly—was impressive, though Joo Dee did not expect any official record to ever say so. Perhaps the Fire Lord would commend them for it, in his time, and shower them with favors; and when the wheel turned again, no doubt the fifty-third king of Ba Sing Se would have them all branded traitors—and whoever was his Grand Secretary would nod and agree and make sure that it was done. Whether the price in the end would be hatred, dishonor, disgrace, did not matter. The Dai Li would pay it so that the city would not have to pay a higher one, and that was as it should be.
Long Feng had not presented the matter to them in those terms, of course. He had explained to the highest-ranking agents that he had found a way to ensure that war never threatened Ba Sing Se again, but that the king would not hear of it—that Long Feng's pleas had fallen on deaf ears, that the king had been led astray. By the Avatar, who was only a girl and did not know the error of her ways; and who could blame the king for being kind to a girl? Who could blame him for showing obedience and piety toward the Avatar herself? But the fate of the city lay with the Dai Li by the orders of a greater and wiser Avatar, and they could not shirk their duty now.
Certainly it had given some of the agents pause, when Long Feng had brought the Fire princess Azula out before them; Joo Dee had seen it in their faces. But the highest-ranking agents held the rank they held precisely because they were responsible, dutiful—because they believed in the same vision the Grand Secretary believed in. And the king was, in the end, a cultural tradition to be protected—even from himself.
To the lower-ranking agents, nothing had been explained at all. They would do as they were told by others, secure in the knowledge that they served the city by it. That, too, was as it should be.
Joo Dee paused at the top of the stair, put her hand to the door, and closed her eyes. The various entrances to and exits from the catacombs were all lit, but usually by the gentle green light of glowing crystals—compared to the street outside on even the cloudiest of days, such a light was next to nothing, and Joo Dee preferred not to stand around blinking helplessly if she could avoid it. She pushed the door open and took two steps, turned and closed the door behind her, and only then opened her eyes again.
Despite her caution, it still took a moment for her vision to adjust. Intriguing, really, how such a simple thing could make even a street Joo Dee knew as well as this one look briefly new. For that instant, the light seemed so sharp, the shapes of the buildings bright-edged and unfamiliar—but appearances were deceptive, and underneath the city was the same as it had always been. As it would always be, whether the banners that draped the walls were the king's seal or the black flame of the Fire Nation. Appearances were deceptive; the city, and the Dai Li, endured.
.*.
The Grand Secretary was, of course, in his office—his duties still took him to the palace at times, but not so often as they once had and not for as long, which meant he no longer left as early in the day as he had before. The king met with his generals more often than he met with Long Feng, these days, and under other circumstances Joo Dee knew that would have troubled Long Feng greatly; but the Grand Secretary now had other matters which occupied his time.
Joo Dee stood by the door, bowing, until at last there came the sound of paper shuffling, and Long Feng sighed and said, "Yes?"
"A report from the catacombs, Grand Secretary," Joo Dee said, straightening up, and was rewarded with Long Feng's full attention—he let the papers settle onto his desk, gaze fixed on Joo Dee, and rose halfway out of his chair. There was a smile beginning to curl his mouth; surely he had to know what Joo Dee was about to tell him, or at least he could guess. But Joo Dee would not have let the opportunity to be the one to tell him pass her by, not for anything. She took a deep breath, savoring, and then inclined her head. "The tunnels are complete," she said.
Hearing it aloud made Long Feng smile truly, at last. Another man would have tilted his head back and laughed, would have thrown his arms up in celebration; but Long Feng smiled, and then sat back in his chair, pressing his fingertips together with an air of satisfaction. "Good," he said, "good," and nodded once, sharply. "Then we are ready to begin."
The more Azula learned about the Dai Li, the more pleased she was with them.
Of course, they had given Azula what she wanted, which she always valued highly—or were trying to give it to her, at least, and seemed likely to succeed, and what greater proof of merit was there than success? And they spoke to her respectfully, bowed deeply, which was nearly as important in its own way and gratifying besides.
But even beyond that, the entire Ministry had a certain sense of order, of control, that was so—satisfying, even calming. Every single Dai Li agent knew their place and kept to it; they never seemed to ask one another questions or countermand one another. Their clothes, their shoes, their lodgings—all were provided by the Ministry, and there was no dissension because there was nowhere for dissension to arise, no space left for it. Their thoughts seemed to have been as neatly provided to them as their shoes, and they were uniform and obedient and absolutely everywhere.
No doubt they bored Mai half out of her mind, Azula thought; but if they'd been made for Azula as a gift, they couldn't have delighted her more.
Azula had accepted the Grand Secretary's offer of Ministry lodgings—at first because it would help maintain the fiction that they were agents themselves, and then, once Long Feng had explained the truth to the ones who needed to know it, simply because it was convenient. Besides, the Dai Li weren't the only people in the Upper Ring; granted, everyone else who was seemed to have had the curiosity neatly trained out of them, or else had lost it through sheer complacency. But there was no reason to take the risk of drawing attention, not when there was nothing to be gained by it.
And perhaps Mai was bored, but she hadn't bothered Azula over it. Samnang did as he was told, of course; and Ty Lee had to hate dressing up in the same uniform as a thousand nameless women, deliberately reducing herself to invisibility—but she would do it, for Azula.
A matter of days, perhaps hours, and all Ba Sing Se would do as Azula asked. Had anyone ever known a sweeter satisfaction?
She smiled to herself and leaned back in her chair, tilting her face into the sun—even the sunlight, the red burn of it through her eyelids, was like glorious flame. It was as though the whole of the universe were aligned behind her purpose, like hand and arm behind a knife—
"Azula?"
Ty Lee. Azula cracked an eye open. "Yes?"
"Somebody's here, from the Grand Secretary!" Ty Lee bounced twice on her toes, bright-eyed. "She says it's time."
Azula looked up at the ceiling, both eyes open, and let herself grin. "Well," she said, and she aimed for conversational but surely missed—she was simply too pleased. It was foolish, childish, to lose control of such a thing; but then she was talking to Ty Lee, and Ty Lee was the last person in the world who would hold it against her. "Let's not keep her waiting."
.*.
The walk to the Grand Secretary's office was short and pleasant—although today Azula could almost have wished it were longer, to give her more time and space to admire everything that was about to be hers. Could there be anything more pleasing to the mind than walking through a city on the morning of its conquest, knowing that by evening it would be beneath your heel?
They were bowed into the Grand Secretary's office right away, and when Azula entered, Long Feng was already standing, fingertips pressed together. He didn't exactly look eager, that wasn't the right word; but for a man who did what he did, he showed a genuinely admirable resolve. Azula might have expected him to waver from the course he had chosen, even—or perhaps especially—at this late hour, and yet: his hands were steady, his gaze certain. She could see no doubt in him.
Unexpected, but she had no complaints. Such clarity in pursuit of their purpose would only make this easier.
And he was not a fool; even in his own hall, he waited for the door to close behind them before he said, "Princess Azula," and inclined his head.
"Grand Secretary," Azula said, and did not incline her own.
"Our work is complete," Long Feng said, and even though she had known they were coming, there was still no sweeter music than those words. "I assume you will wish to coordinate with your troops. The Dai Li are, of course, willing and able to serve in that regard as well—if there is a message you would like to have sent outside the city, you need only give the word and it will be relayed for you."
"Of course, of course," Azula said, and took the three paces that lay between her and the Grand Secretary's desk. "If I may?" She did not wait for the answer: there was rice paper, a writing brush, fresh ink. She picked up the brush, thought for a moment, and then began to write. "And my uncle? My dear, dear brother?" she asked, without lifting her gaze from the page.
"The same," Long Feng said. "They are being watched, as you ordered. They suspect nothing."
"Mm." Foolish of Uncle, really, to choose to work in a tea shop when everyone who had ever met him could not help knowing of his fondness for the stuff. Azula had told the Dai Li to look in the teahouses of the Lower Ring, thinking that perhaps he might be spotted visiting one—she had never imagined he would be so easy to find. Such a tactical misstep, from the Dragon of the West! Though of course he probably hadn't found himself with too many other skills that someone in the Lower Ring would pay him to use—and Zuzu would be no help there, unless there was a job to be had by virtue of one's ability to glare unhappily. "Excellent. And you have somewhere to keep them?" She would not have trusted Uncle and Zuko to the city guard even if she could have, not after she had so easily escaped from them herself.
"Yes, of course," Long Feng said, nodding. "The catacombs where we have been working are often used by the Dai Li for such purposes. Once we have captured them, we will secure them there."
"Well," Azula said. Three more strokes completed the final character; she set the brush down across the inkstone, and then put two fingers down the side of her sash. She had given up her armor for Dai Li robes, of course; but the troops that waited outside the city would not accept orders that did not carry her seal. She had sometimes kept it around her neck, but in this case that would have been unwise—she hadn't needed anyone asking why only one of the middle-rank Joo Dees wore a necklace. She fished it out and swept ink across its face. "Then I suppose we are ready." One quick press, not too long so the ink would not bleed; a little flash of heat from her hand to make sure it was dry; and then she held the page out to Long Feng. "Have that delivered to the soldiers outside the city. They'll be prepared, when it's time to strike. I believe there were a few details you wished to take care of in the city, before the true assault begins?"
"Yes, Princess," Long Feng said, and smiled. "It will all be dealt with shortly."
It was easier to wake with the sun when spring was so close, when the days were beginning to lengthen again—so many times in the darker part of winter, Wan Liu had found herself staring at the dim shadow of the ceiling, wide awake but stuck waiting for the sun to rise so she would not waste firewood or lamp-oil or candles just for the sake of having something to see by. Back when they had had firewood or lamp-oil or candles, at least; here in Ba Sing Se they had nothing, except a plain little lantern Mushi had bought that had a stubborn wick. It liked to light for Mushi, and for Li, but Wan Liu had never had much luck with it.
Except now she did not need to have any luck with it, because spring was creeping nearer, and the sun was rising earlier, and she did not have to lie quietly in the dark and wait for morning anymore.
She had risen today to weak dawn light and a chilly floor—they did not have a real fire because they did not have enough money to feed one, although there was a small brazier they kept to cook over. Coal was expensive, but—one of the many mysteries of living in a city—not as expensive as wood; perhaps because it came in smaller and denser portions, easier to pack onto a train. Once Mushi and the children were awake, the stone tended to warm up nicely, probably because they were all moving around and touching it. But when it was just Wan Liu, the floor was very cold.
The windows were paper, which kept the worst of the wind out and still let in a soft light—enough for Wan Liu to sweep by, first. And then enough to find both their pitchers, and also the bucket, the one with rope for a handle, which had somehow gotten shuffled off into a corner; probably for one of Jin's games, Wan Liu thought fondly. He was always needing a new cliff face for his train to navigate.
If the floor had been cold, the street was colder, and Wan Liu's left shoe was going to need a patch very soon. But the public fountain down the street was not frozen, nor was its water cut off, as it sometimes had been before without warning. Wan Liu filled pitchers and bucket both and then slung the bucket-rope over her shoulder.
She couldn't carry it all and climb besides, so when she reached the ladder-stair, she set one of the pitchers down, and then straightened and was greeted by the sight of—a hand?
"Give one to me," said Li; his face above her was nothing but shadow, but she knew it was him because of his voice, that stone-on-stone voice, as though every word he spoke were scraped from him. Perhaps the sound of it should have been unpleasant, but it only made her smile—begrudging seemed to come naturally to him, in speech as in everything else, and yet all the memories she had of him were, in their own way, generous: the dumpling he had accepted from Zhiyang, the way Qingying had smiled after spending a little while on the roof with him, the toy train he had given to Jin. And now—waking earlier than he usually did, and rousing from his warm bed to help an old woman carry water. Maybe she was wrong; maybe generosity came naturally to him after all, and he tried to be grudging instead but was not any good at it.
She bent down for the pitcher she had meant to leave on the floor and handed it up to him, and then handed him the second when he motioned for that one, and then the bucket on its rope—oh, she could have carried it, but she did not have the trick of keeping all the water inside it when she did, and a winter morning was not a good time to find yourself with a trickle of cold water running down your back. Not even so late a winter morning as this one.
"Thank you," Wan Liu said, warm, as she began to climb; she saw Li's gaze flick to her face, and as quickly away, and he turned, a pitcher in each hand, and said nothing in reply.
He was carrying them toward the brazier—because he had seen her do it often enough to know where to take them, she thought, and that tiny, unthinking show of familiarity made her smile. She reached the top of the ladder-stair and took up the bucket Li had left behind, following, and by the time he'd set the pitchers down and turned around, she was there.
"Thank you," she said again, where he could not pretend not to hear, and this time Li flushed and looked away.
"I was rude to you," he said, abrupt. "Before. When we—when we met the first time."
"A little," Wan Liu agreed, not unkindly, when Li did not seem as though he meant to continue.
"You weren't angry," Li said.
"You were," Wan Liu said, and could not help smiling when Li looked at her with wide eyes. "You think I don't know what anger looks like? You think I have never been angry?"
"You weren't angry with me," Li said.
Wan Liu shrugged a shoulder, gentle. "You weren't angry with me, either," she said. "You were angry with something else—with yourself. You did not need me to be angry with you, too."
Li looked at her thoughtfully for a long moment; she lifted up a pitcher, splashed cold water on her face and hands, dried them, as though she could not feel his gaze following her.
"I never asked you what happened," he said, quiet. "Why you were in the ferry station, the day we got there."
Wan Liu held a hand to the side of the brazier—still a little warm, so something must have lasted the night—and did not look at him. She wouldn't tell him about the girl who had claimed to be his sister; she knew that without even pausing to consider. He would not take it the way his uncle had, she was sure of that, and what good would it do? "There was a fire," she said at last, which at least was not a lie. "We did not know where else to go."
"I'm—sorry," Li said—but it was not an apology, Wan Liu thought, only an expression of sympathy, and that was as it should be.
She looked at Li and smiled. "Who in this world has not lost something?" she said. "And considering the things we could have lost—a house, in the end, is not so very much." And he, surely, already knew that—a boy who traveled with his uncle, who never spoke a word about his father or mother; who had, one way or another, turned his back on the nation that had given him those yellow eyes, if he really did work for the queen of Lannang. And had paid for it, too, by the scar on his face.
He had been angry, when they first met—angry in the way of a person who turns to anger out of habit, and a habit like that was difficult to break. But Li had done it, or at least was learning to; he had been kind to Zhiyang, to Qingying, to Jin, and the anger was still there, perhaps, but no longer seemed to drive him as it once had.
"But your brother—"
"The house is not the first thing I have lost, that is true," Wan Liu said. "Wan Hao was my family for a long time, and I loved him; but he is not the only family I have. Only look," and she threw a glance over her shoulder at the floor where the children were still sleeping, "and you will see—for all I have lost, I am still a rich woman."
Li stared at her, brow furrowed; and Wan Liu looked at his narrow, sour, uncertain face, and felt fondness well up in her like fresh water.
She reached out and touched his arm, wrapped her hand around his wrist, and then said to him gently, "Whatever family it is that you have left behind or lost, I hope you know it is not the only one you have."
Li was still for a moment, and then, slowly, uncertainly, he reached out himself, and rested three fingertips against the back of Wan Liu's hand.
He did not seem to know what to say, and Wan Liu did not want to make him uncomfortable; she smiled at him and then let go and turned back to the water, the brazier. The rice pudding from yesterday's breakfast was still hanging over the brazier, but it needed to be warmer—too cold and Yanhong could not be convinced to eat, no matter what she was promised as a treat in return for emptying her bowl. And for lunch—Wan Liu counted coins in her head. The sun was already beginning to shine red-gold against the paper windows, and if it were mild today, the children would hate to stay in—
"When will you be at the tea shop today?"
"I—the afternoon," Li said, clearing his throat.
"Then perhaps you will choose to do me yet another kindness," Wan Liu said, "and take the children out for something to eat later? Qingying will go, too, you will not have to do it by yourself—"
"Of course I will," said Qingying, behind her—they must have woken her with their talking. And if Li seemed to be learning to do without anger, Qingying was perhaps learning to do without fear. A month ago, Qingying would have said it quickly, hurriedly, desperate to avoid giving Wan Liu any reason to consider them a burden; but she said it this morning with a tentative smile, when Wan Liu turned to look at her, and Wan Liu could not help but smile back.
"You can even take them by the tea shop after," Wan Liu said to Li. "That way you will not be late."
"Yes," Li said, "yes, I—I would like that."
.*.*.*.
She should perhaps have felt it coming—should have looked up and seen the messenger hawk wheel overhead, and been filled with foreboding. But it was only a messenger hawk, a dart of brown feathers and gleaming harness against the vast pale morning sky; and Admiral Paozun sent them with remarkable frequency. Yin stood on the deck and squinted up at it, and then raised an arm, and the hawk screeched and wheeled again and then swept down for a landing.
"Haven't been letting you out enough, have they," Yin said to it, grimacing and bracing her arm against its weight; and then she plucked the scroll-case from its harness and strode into the bridge.
She let the hawk off onto the table with a sigh of relief, and rubbed her abused forearm with one hand while she thumbed the cap off the scroll-case with the other. Probably orders to run weapons drills, or perhaps maneuvering exercises—they had done one or the other nearly every day, now that the fleet was fully assembled.
The war machines were all away; they had been unloaded with admirable efficiency onto the shore, and Yin was glad to have nothing more to do with whatever they were intended for. So whatever Admiral Paozun wanted, at least it was no longer to do with them.
The scroll wanted very badly to curl; Yin pinned it flat with her hand and began to read.
She was still reading when Kishen came through the hatch, the clang of his boots against metal suddenly and almost absurdly loud—the noise made the hawk screech and flutter its wings unhappily, and Kishen made an absent, soothing sound and then stopped short.
"Sir?"
"Catapult drills," Yin said, without looking at him. "It'll be catapult drills today."
"Yes, sir," Kishen said, slow and almost wary—because he'd noticed something, of course he had. "The orders will need to be copied, sir—"
"Not yet," Yin said, and kept her gaze on the rice paper underneath her hand. "The hawk. Send the hawk back to the admiral."
"Yes, sir," Kishen said, after a moment, and coaxed the hawk to his arm with a few murmured words. He was looking at her, she could tell that he was; but she wasn't sure what her face might look like, what he'd see in it, and that meant she shouldn't look up.
He stepped out and closed the hatch behind him, and she stared down at the paper and tried to figure out what she was going to say to him.
Such a little thing—brushstrokes on a page. It was almost funny, she thought distantly, that this should be what she had been waiting for—that this should be the choice that would undo her, the choice that wasn't a choice at all. By all rights, it should have had something to do with the Avatar, with the spirits; it should have been an inquiry into Zhao's death. But no: it was just her, standing in the bridge holding a piece of paper, being given an order she could not imagine following.
There would be catapult drills, she hadn't lied about that; but in addition to Admiral Paozun's orders, there were other orders. Recopied, as Paozun's would be recopied by her, and sealed with his seal, but they had not come from him—it said so, right at the beginning. In practical terms, she could even understand them: to capture and hold civilians in the numbers that were expected was downright impossible, and simply allowing them to escape to other kingdoms—to swell the ranks of armies that would need to be defeated in the future, perhaps—had clear disadvantages.
And yet, when she saw it there, when she read it to herself: Earth Kingdom citizens attempting to flee the seizure of the city are not to be permitted to cross the Yellow Seas, but are to be fired upon at will—she stared at the words and could not imagine how Paozun could have read them and then had them taken away to be copied, knowing they would be sent on. Had he hesitated? Had he looked at them with discomfort, with unease, even as he put his seal to them?
Was it even reasonable to think that he should have? She didn't know how to tell anymore—surely he would not have thought her reasonable, had he seen her drive a sword through her commanding officer's back, and yet at the time she had not felt able to do anything else. It had seemed so clearly to be the only path through.
As there was only one path through now.
A hundred years ago, perhaps she would not have recoiled from the idea—perhaps no one would have. The enemy was the enemy, after all; and in those early days, when there had been so few true armies, perhaps there would not have been a line to draw between civilian and soldier.
But a hundred years of war had refined the workings of combat, the understanding of what honor meant in such a context. Yin glanced over toward the corner of the table—empty, on the bridge, but that corner on the table in her cabin held her books. It felt like it had been a lifetime ago that the captain of the Yu Yan Archers had smiled at her and slid Le Hoa Duan into her saddlebag. The works of the Earth Kingdom sage, clever and sly and absurd, had proven wholly different in tone from Meizao Lin's calm and well-reasoned arguments; but both had discussed the pursuit of piety, of rightness of action, in a time of so much killing, and Yin had discovered as she read that she herself already possessed a certain unspoken understanding.
Soldiers were soldiers, and every soldier in every Earth Kingdom had made the same bargain Yin had, the same agreement: that they were willing to give their lives for their nation, that they were willing to kill people for it and let people try to kill them in return. There was no injustice there, no dishonor. But civilians—
Between soldiers, it was battle, but civilians made it slaughter; and slaughter like that was the worst kind of dishonor, a stain on everything from the armor Yin wore to the ship that served her, and every sailor on it besides. And, feeling so, Yin could not pretend to feel otherwise, could not simply set it aside and pass the orders on with her own stamp upon them. It was hopelessly irrational of her, surely, to place so much importance on the simple act of not betraying herself when there was so very much at stake. Irrational, impractical, ridiculous; whoever it was who had calmly and coolly decided that fleeing civilians represented a problem best dealt with by catapult would surely have thought so.
And yet she had sworn to serve the Fire Nation with honor, with righteousness; and if she let the Fire Nation turn that service into something else, something reprehensible, surely that broke her oath in its own way?
Perhaps if she were lucky she would survive, and be tried for her mutiny by a war minister with a taste for philosophy.
.*.
It did not take long for Kishen to return, hawkless; and when he did, he gave her plenty of warning, tromping up to the bridge hatch with quite a bit more energy than usual. It had been luck beyond all measure that she had taken the Avatar and her companions to the gate he had been guarding, she could see that easily in retrospect. She could never have guessed at the time that he would be so astoundingly willing to help her; and even beyond that, so competent, so observant, so very easy to get along with.
He had done so many things he should not have done, with her, but none so dangerous as this—would he be willing again? It seemed ludicrous to imagine that he would; he had untied ostrich horses for her, had kept quiet about the Avatar and about Zhao, but this? Was it even fair to ask him to follow her, in this?
The hatch creaked open behind her. "Sir," he said quietly.
"Close the hatch," Yin said, and he did.
She felt steadier, calmer, and so this time she turned around and looked at him. She had the orders in her hand, and held them out.
He could read a little, she knew, and the orders as written didn't contain any particularly obscure characters; she waited, giving him time, and she could see the moment he reached the sentence that had caught her attention, the way his gaze flicked back up the line of characters so he could read it again.
His expression didn't change. He finished reading and rolled the orders up carefully when he was done, and only then did he look at her. "What would you like me to do, sir?"
Set them on fire, Yin didn't say. She drew a slow breath, and tried to decide how best to say it; but subtler words refused to come. "I can't do it, Kishen."
"Sir—"
She reached out and took the paper from his hand—if she had been born a Firebender, the page would already be ash, but as it was the sheet remained whole beneath her fingers. "I cannot," she said again. "I know we are at war, I know it; but the face of our enemy is not going to be found in—in helpless people fleeing from our princess's victory. 'For the greater glory of the Fire Nation'—" Yin tossed the half-curled page onto the table with a sharp flick of the wrist. "This will not make my nation glorious. This will make it—" She shook her head, groping for a word. "This will make it—nothing, make it vile. All the things that I have wanted from it—wanted for it—" She shook her head again and clenched her fists. This had happened to her before, this feeling of seeing a thing she loved cast in a suddenly bitter light; the love did not go away, but it hurt where it hadn't hurt before—where it had once given uncomplicated gladness but never could again.
She closed her eyes and stood silent for a long moment; Kishen said nothing, and when she opened her eyes again, he was looking back at her, calmly and without judgment.
"I want nothing more," she said, "than to act for the glory of the Fire Nation."
Kishen gazed at her without expression; and then, unexpectedly, the corner of his mouth began to tilt—upward? He was damned well smiling at her. "Then do it, sir," he said.
The first time Katara had met with the Council of Five, she had barely heard a word anyone had said. The five greatest generals of the most powerful Earth kingdom there was, talking to her—listening to what she'd said they should do, to what the king had said they should do, and deciding how best to make it happen! She'd been lucky already to find Suki, Yue, Toph; and she'd known she was going to need to be even luckier, because even with their help, how would she ever have taken on the Fire Nation? But she had never imagined she could be as lucky as this. Even now, when it felt like they'd met just about every two days since, it was kind of hard to look around at a room full of generals and officials and not feel a certain awe.
Although for all she knew some of them were feeling the same way about sitting in a room with the Avatar. Katara tried to imagine General How or General Ji, sweaty with nerves, sneaking wide-eyed glances at her, and wanted to laugh—but the meeting wasn't over yet, so she swallowed it down and tried to pay attention instead.
"—sent to the nearer kingdoms have already returned," General Wei was saying, waving a hand at the enormous map that lay in the middle of the room. "Three of them will be offering full reports later today, but I have been informed that we are likely to be able to reach an agreement."
"To reach an agreement," General Sung sniffed. "As if there is anything to discuss! These minor kingdoms should be grateful—"
"As I am sure they will be," General Ji said, evenly, "when they have a chance to hear the information we have to give them. You may recall that the messages sent by the king were vague—and for very good reason. The messengers sent to Shuming Wo have not returned, though they departed the same day as the rest."
He met Katara's gaze soberly, and she looked back, any urge to laugh gone. General Ji didn't speak very often, but Katara had found that she liked it when he did; he was quiet and thoughtful, and seemed to care much more than General Sung about the consequences of the Council's decisions.
"Captured," General Sung said, with a dismissive wave of the hand. "We will ransom them back at some point."
Katara snuck a glance at Sokka: he was rolling his eyes. He didn't like General Sung much either.
General How cleared his throat pointedly. "The messengers sent to the southeast have returned with additional good news," General How said, "which I believe the Avatar will be pleased to hear," and he turned to face Katara and inclined his head. "The last we had heard, the kingdom of Bongye was suffering greatly under the assaults of the Fire Nation—but that is no longer the case. A fleet of Water Tribe ships came to their aid."
Katara stared at him; without entirely meaning to, she found herself clutching Sokka's hand, which would have been embarrassing except he was clutching back. Aang had been drifting around the ceiling somewhere, the way he usually did during the Council's meetings, but he had heard it, he must have, and he was floating down toward them, bright blue in the corner of Katara's eye.
General How smiled. "The situation is less urgent these days," he said, "and no doubt they will go where they are needed; but by all accounts the ships are still in Chameleon Bay, at least for the moment. Perhaps you and your brother will be able to take some time away to visit your people."
"Perhaps we will," Katara managed to say, with reasonable formality; she almost wanted to laugh again, but couldn't quite do it. They'd thought about seeing Father again, when they'd run into Bato—it seemed like so long ago!—and even then it had been hard to imagine; it was three years now since they'd seen him. When he'd left, it had felt like he might as well be traveling to the sky, he'd been going so far out of their experience—but Katara realized with a jolt that she and Sokka had probably gone even further than Father ever had, by now. Bato had surely found the fleet again, and he must have told Father he'd seen them—what had he said? What had Father thought, when he'd learned she was the Avatar? When Bato had told them they were on their way to the other side of the world? Katara could hardly remember what it had been like before she'd known Suki, before she'd met Yue or Toph; but Father didn't even know who they were—
It was amazing and awful at the same time, to think about how far away she was from the twelve-year-old Father knew her best as. Maybe they would go—maybe they would all go, and with the Council here to take care of the eclipse and Father standing beside her again, maybe everything really would start to get easier.
"Well," said General Wei, brisk, "I believe that is all—until this afternoon, of course. I assume the Avatar and her brother will also wish to join us to hear the messengers' reports?"
"Yes," Katara said, "yes, of course. We'll be there."
.*.
Sokka left her in the hallway outside the Council room with a farewell squeeze of the wrist, saying something about going to try to find a snack—but his tone was a little too casual, and Katara could guess from the look on his face that what he was really going to go try to find was probably Suki. She hid a smile and told him he was a bottomless pit, and then, at last, it was just her and Aang.
She looked both ways along the corridor to make sure, but there was nobody in sight—and she was glad for it. It had gotten so much harder to find time to talk to Aang in the middle of a busy palace, so many people nearby all the time; oh, they knew she was the Avatar, and maybe she could have tried explaining it, but she hated telling people about Aang like he wasn't right there listening, and unless she was really going to be around long enough for them to get used to it, it didn't seem like it was likely to keep anybody from staring at her. It was safe in the evening, when it was just the six of them in their rooms sharing their makeshift bed, and Katara had talked to him then a few times—but she kept falling asleep partway through.
She turned to look at Aang to find he'd been checking the hallway, too, and then he looked back at her and beamed. "So," he said, drifting a little nearer, "are you really going to go visit your father?"
"I want to," Katara said, "if we really do have time." It was weird to think about leaving, about just—going for a trip, after everything they'd had to go through to get here in the first place; but the Council and the king knew everything now. What did they need Katara for? What could it hurt, if she left for a little while to go find Father?
"I guess we probably will," Aang said, like he was thinking the same thing she was—Katara smiled at him, pleased, but his answering smile was off somehow, dim and too-thoughtful.
"Aang?"
"What's—what's he like?"
Katara blinked. "What's he—what do you mean?"
"I don't know," Aang admitted. "I don't—in the temple I never—is there something different about him that makes him—you know, fatherous?"
Katara couldn't help laughing at the word, but she was pretty sure she knew what he meant to ask. "I don't think so," she said, gentle. "I mean—not more than anybody else. I love him and he loves me; and I've ignored him sometimes and we've made each other angry and he's annoyed me, but we never let that stop us from taking care of each other. That's what Monk Gyatso was like for you, right?"
"Pretty much," Aang agreed, and the look on his face was so wistful Katara wanted to hug him.
"Then I think you know about having a father at least as well as I do," Katara said. "And better than some people who actually have fathers, probably." Fathers were complicated, after all. Katara thought of Yue, keeping everything she could do so carefully secret from her father until Katara had come along and made it so she couldn't, and Toph, whose father had stood there and let her walk away without so much as a goodbye. Prince Zuko, even, whose father had sent him away when he was still practically a boy—granted, Katara thought he was awful, with all the times he'd attacked them and all the trouble he'd caused them, but his father shouldn't have thought so.
"Maybe he'll even be able to help us," Aang said, after a moment. "If we use the eclipse to go after the Fire Lord, we're going to need some ships."
"I think the Fire Nation probably has a few more ships than he does," Katara said, laughing.
"Well, maybe," Aang admitted, sheepish. "But it sounded like he did a pretty good job with the ships he had, didn't it?"
"It did," Katara said, because it was true—it made a little thrill of pride tingle in her chest just to think about it. Two Earth kingdoms, on the brink of defeat until Father got there with his ships, with her uncles and aunts and cousins, and saved them. All those raiders, so much of the Southern Water Tribe lost, and still, still, the Fire Lord couldn't stop them.
"I bet he's going to have some questions about this whole Avatar thing," Aang said—and he chuckled a little after, like he meant to tease her, but it was so close to what Katara had been thinking in the Council room that she couldn't join in.
She looked away instead, smiled halfheartedly at the wall; and of course Aang noticed, because how could he not when she was the only other person in the hallway?
"Wait, are you—you're afraid?" he said, startled.
"No!" Afraid of Father—that wasn't the right word at all. "I just—I don't know. Hearing it from Bato like that, when he hasn't seen me in so long—I can't imagine what he thinks of it. And what have I even done with it, anyway—"
"Are you kidding?" She looked up then—it had been mean of her to look away, really, when Aang couldn't touch her to catch her attention—and found Aang looking back at her with an expression she couldn't quite name. "Katara—Katara. Are you kidding? He's going to be so proud of you. I am," he added, almost shy, and then frowned. "If he isn't, you should get a new one."
Katara had been about to bite her lip—to ask whether he really thought so, or maybe to thank him, or both; but at this she couldn't help but smile. "I think I'll keep him even if he isn't," she said, "but I hope you're right."
"Of course I am!" Aang said, crossing his arms imperiously—except he was drifting sideways and started to go partway through the wall, which ruined the effect a little. He noticed and frowned at the wall, and then swooped down and away until he was back at Katara's shoulder. "If nothing else, he's got to be impressed by the Earthbending, right? You're getting really good at it—you know you are, or Toph would yell mean rude things at you instead of nice rude things."
Katara laughed—it was true, after all. Toph still shouted at her all the time, but these days it was mostly things like "Oh, come on! You can do better than that," which actually was a compliment if you looked at it carefully enough. Katara didn't think she was ever going to feel about earth the same way she felt about water; but maybe that was all right.
"You guys did say you were going to practice today, didn't you?" Aang said.
"Yes," Katara admitted.
"Well, come on!" Aang narrowed his eyes at her, and tilted his transparent blue chin up. "Race you," he added, and then darted away.
"Race—but you don't even have to use your feet!"
Yue was glad she had asked Suki for help, truly. Even as unskilled with the pike Father had given her as she was, she had noticed a change in her hands, her arms, her calves—but practicing with it still tired her more quickly than she liked, and who would be better able to teach her how to strengthen herself than Suki? Suki had been fighting since she was practically a child, had taught other girls how to do the same; and Yue would never be a warrior in the way Suki was a warrior, but on a journey like this it seemed wise to learn to handle what weapons she had as best she was able. It was only reasonable to ask Suki for assistance, and it had been very kind of her to agree.
Yue only wished it could perhaps hurt a little less.
"Still aching a bit from yesterday?" Suki said knowingly.
Yue made a face at her, rueful. "A bit." It was not a bad pain, not like a wound; it was just that a sore muscle hurt so often, and she had so many of them. She had never realized she used her back and stomach muscles for so many things—and now that she did, she wished she could stop, but it was surprisingly difficult.
Suki smiled. "You're doing really well," she said, "if that helps," and then she wiggled her fingers expectantly. "Come on, hands."
It was the least pleasant part of Yue's least favorite stretch: they were seated on the floor of the sparring room, facing each other, with their legs as far apart as they could manage. Suki, of course, could manage very well, legs nearly a straight line; but Yue's feet were usually braced against Suki's ankles, at best, and it made her thighs—not scream, perhaps, but—shout. Loudly.
And then, to improve the muscles of Yue's back, Suki took her hands, and helped Yue lower her torso toward the floor as far as she could bear. Which was not usually particularly far, although Yue was discernably better at it now than she had been when they had begun these sessions.
Yue wrapped her fingers around Suki's wrists and pulled, felt Suki pull back—it was not about Suki simply yanking her down, as Yue had mistakenly thought the first time, and yet the tension was still surprisingly helpful. Yue was also getting better at keeping her back straight, instead of letting it curve the way it wanted to, which was possibly proof that her back was indeed getting stronger.
Even if right now what it mostly did was ache.
They stayed where they were for five slow breaths; and then Suki's grip gentled, which meant Yue was allowed to sit up again, and Yue did so gratefully.
"Longer the next time," Suki warned, and then her gaze flicked toward the door—looking for Sokka, Yue thought, and swallowed down a laugh. It was sweet; and, more than that, it made her feel almost wistful. Suki was so very—bold, in everything she did: in the way she stood and the way she fought, the way she'd dared Father to refuse her and the way she touched Sokka whenever she felt like it. Suki did everything as though she had a right to do it, as though it had never occurred to her that she ought not to, or that anyone might rather she did not. Yue had been promised to marry Hahn, and still she could not imagine sitting beside him at a feast and pressing her knee to his—surely it would not have done any harm, and yet Yue would never have dared to, even if she had wanted to.
Of course, at the last feast she had been to, she had cut the table in half and thrown it at Master Pakku, so perhaps she was being ungenerous with herself.
"I'm sure the meeting is nearly over," Yue said, smiling, and Suki shot her a rueful glance, acknowledging, but didn't quite smile back. There was something odd about it, Yue thought, and perhaps she ought to have let it go but she could not quite convince herself to. She looked at Suki a moment longer, considering. "Something is bothering you."
Suki looked away and sighed, obviously trying to decide what exactly she wanted to say; Yue flexed her feet, her toes, against Suki's ankles until Suki met her gaze again.
"Tell me."
"It's not—" Suki stopped, shook her head a little, and started again. "I'm—I'm glad this has all worked out. I just don't think it's worked out quite as well as Katara thinks it has." She paused and glanced at Yue, eyes narrowed. "You've noticed that the Council's never invited the rest of us to their meetings, right?"
Yue had, but she had not thought much of it. She shrugged, uncertain. "I do not know that I would have expected it. Katara is the Avatar, and Sokka is—"
"A boy?"
Yue blinked. Suki was looking at her intently but not unkindly, and, more importantly, was not wrong. "Yes—yes, I suppose that is what I would have said." She hesitated. "I told you how I came to join Katara, didn't I?"
Suki nodded.
"I know that Master Pakku was wrong," Yue said slowly, "but I still—I still find him in my head sometimes." She shook her head, and met Suki's gaze again. "I have no particular strategic skill to offer them, and I do not believe Toph would attend a meeting of the Council even if she were asked." Boring, Toph would say, and Yue could picture the look she would have on her face as she said it. "But I will say that I am not sure why they would choose to exclude you."
Suki raised her eyebrows, smiling. "Funny," she said thoughtfully. "Out of the three of us, the reasons I can think of for them to exclude me are the ones I thought made the most sense."
Yue frowned at her. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that after seven years stuck doing nothing," Suki said, "they've finally recovered their king—their whole kingdom—from the Dai Li—"
Yue saw all at once what she meant. "—whose policies of inaction they, as men of war, must have greatly resented," she finished, nodding. "And who were granted their position in this kingdom's governance by Avatar Kyoshi."
"I understand exactly why they don't want me in there," Suki concluded. "But you—you're a princess, and Toph's a noblewoman."
Now it was Yue's turn to raise her eyebrows at Suki. "A princess with magical hair, from a far-away tribe on the very edge of the civilized world; and a short, blind noblewoman from some kingdom off to the south with which they share no border. I do not think either one of us looks to them like anything but a curiosity."
Her tone had gone very dry by the end, and when she had finished Suki laughed. "I suppose you're right," she said, and then smiled, looking much more like herself. "I am glad, though, that it's gone as well as it has. With the king, and the Council—and if they really can help Katara, then I don't mind if they don't like us. She's been so much happier. It's been good for her, I think, to have some of the weight taken off her shoulders."
"It has," Yue agreed, and smiled back. "And if we ask her what they've said, you know she will tell us."
"I do," Suki agreed. "Maybe we can start having meetings of our own in the afternoons. All right, come on," she added, holding out her hands; and Yue sighed, bracing herself, and took them.
.*.
They were performing the stretch for the third time—ten slow breaths, now, and they were halfway through the count when there were footsteps at the door.
"Hey, you guys—oh. Am I interrupting?" Sokka said.
Yue tilted her head up far enough to meet Suki's eyes; Suki was looking at her sternly, warningly, but a smile was already beginning to curl the corners of her mouth. "Not in the least," Yue said.
"Yue—" Suki's tone was three-quarters exasperation, but she didn't get any further before she started to laugh.
"We would be very pleased to take a walk with you," Yue added, bright.
"How did you know that's what I was going to—"
"That's what you always want to do," Suki said, and then pointed a scolding finger at Yue. "We're coming back after and we're going to finish this."
"Of course," Yue agreed.
"When I'm done with you, you're going to be the warrior queen of the north," Suki said, as though it were a threat instead of a promise; and then she sprang up like it was nothing, like she'd only been resting anyway.
Yue eased her thighs together carefully, and worked her way to her feet with all the grace and speed of a tortoise stork.
"Sorry," Sokka said. "It's all these stupid meetings—I'm not used to sitting still that long, you know?"
It was perfectly true, Yue thought; but there was something in his voice, something about the way he said it, that made her pause and look at him more closely. He was—nervous? Not quite, Yue decided, but close to it: moving too much, shifting his weight, unsettled.
"You're not used to sitting still at all," Suki said—and her tone was very light, but when Yue glanced at her, she was looking at Sokka a little too intently. She had noticed it, too.
Suki was wearing her usual sash, but had removed her fans from it, to make the stretching motions easier and to keep anyone from being cut accidentally. She retrieved them from the floor and slid them back into place, and perhaps it was Yue's imagination but she seemed almost to stand differently when she had them. "Well, all right," Suki said, "let's go."
"I admire your enthusiasm," Sokka said, "but maybe you guys should also put your shoes back on?"
.*.*.*.
Sometimes Sokka only wanted to wander around the palace grounds; but today he headed right for the gate to the Upper Ring, and he was walking so fast it was kind of hard to keep up. Good thing they'd had enough time to warm up, Suki thought, or Yue's sore legs wouldn't have wanted to cooperate—and even as it was, keeping her reassuring grip on Yue's wrist meant Sokka nearly left them behind twice on the way there.
"Sorry, sorry," he said the second time, when he'd jogged back around a corner to find them.
"Did they give you a lot of good news," Suki said, "or a lot of bad news?"
"It wasn't—" Sokka said, and then stopped and sighed. "I just—want to talk to you guys about it."
Suki had thought of Sokka as a lot of things: as a threat, once, though it made her want to chuckle now to think she'd once tied him to a post; as a friend, gradually, the more times they had talked on the road, the more times he'd made her laugh, the more times she'd showed him a trick with her fans that he'd watched with wide, admiring eyes; and now, increasingly, as something else—as—as dear, which was still new enough that it sometimes took Suki by surprise. She'd already been fond of him by the time they'd reached the north, had decided she liked him enough to sit next to him and touch his hand and tease him, but it was getting—it was getting deeper, sometimes almost painful at unexpected moments, sometimes almost too much.
Looking at him now, there was that almost-pain, that twinge in her chest—like what she was feeling was too big, didn't quite fit inside her ribs. "You can," she said, and it came out funny, her throat too tight.
"You can always talk to us," Yue added from beside her, reaching out to touch Sokka's elbow for a moment, and Suki could have hugged her for managing to say it so clearly.
"I know," Sokka said, and smiled, and for a moment he was out from underneath whatever cloud the meeting had put him under.
The guards at the gate knew them by sight, these days; there were Dai Li agents there, too, but also palace guardsmen in plain old armor, and when the guardsmen bowed, so did the Dai Li. Sokka darted through the gate as soon as it was open, shouting, "Thanks, guys!" back over his shoulder, and then they were out in the wide main avenue of the Upper Ring.
"So," Suki said, when they'd gotten far enough away—they could still see the gate behind them, and of course the palace was visible from most of the Upper Ring, but they'd have to take a way longer walk to fix that. "What did happen in that meeting?"
"Nothing bad," Sokka said instantly. "Nothing bad—a bunch of the messengers we sent out have come back, and it sounds like probably most of the kingdoms are going to want to help, at least once we've actually told them what's going on. Also there was a bunch of administrative stuff at the beginning, but I think maybe I fell asleep during that part."
"And is that all?" Yue prodded gently, when Sokka didn't seem like he was going to keep talking.
"They said—they said some of the messengers had seen the fleet," Sokka said, and Suki didn't need to ask which fleet he was talking about—Yue didn't seem to either. "That maybe Katara and I would have time to go see our father."
"That's wonderful, Sokka," Yue said, beaming; but the expression on Sokka's face didn't seem to agree.
Suki remembered abruptly what had happened the last time this possibility had been raised. "You didn't fight again, did you?"
"No, no," Sokka said, shaking his head—and he didn't seem quite upset enough for that anyway, Suki thought. "No, I just—I didn't ever tell you what I saw back in that swamp, did I?"
The sudden change in subject made Suki blink in surprise, and she glanced at Yue to find that Yue had glanced at her at the same time, uncertain. "No," Suki said, "you didn't."
Sokka's steps slowed; and then after a moment he came to a stop entirely, and turned to look at Suki and Yue. "I was kind of young when they went," he said, "but I wasn't—I wasn't a kid, you know? I would've gone ice dodging in another few months if they hadn't left."
Suki had no idea what he meant—ice dodging? What did that mean? His family threw ice at him until they hit him?—but Yue was nodding. "In the city, a boy can do any great service or meet any kind of challenge to earn his pike," she said, mostly to Suki, "as long as his father and the elders agree it is sufficient; but many of the clans who have come to us from the ice-fields will accept no other ritual but dodging."
"Well, of course not," Sokka said, sounding scandalized. "Anyway—I know Father wanted to keep me safe, and they couldn't have waited a few months just for me. But it still felt like—"
He cut himself off abruptly, and for a moment Suki thought it was only because he couldn't decide what word he wanted to use. But his gaze was going past her, and not in Yue's direction; and Suki turned to see what he was looking at and found herself gazing at the bowed head of the nearest of a group of six Dai Li agents.
"Forgive us for the interruption," the woman said, straightening. "You are the companions of the Avatar, aren't you?"
"You could say that," Sokka said—and his tone wasn't very friendly, but Suki didn't say a word to scold him for it. "Why?"
"The Avatar requires your presence," the woman said, cool.
There was a moment's silence; none of them moved, and Suki wasn't quite sure why, couldn't pinpoint what it was that made her wary, until Yue said—calmly, politely, and wholly disbelieving—"And so she sent—you?"
Because of course Katara would never, not in a thousand years. The king had been willing to let Long Feng keep his job, but if it had been up to Katara, Long Feng would never have set foot in the palace again—he'd been trying to keep her from doing her duty, which in the end meant he had been trying to keep her from ending the war, and that wasn't something Katara was ever likely to forgive or forget. And the Dai Li, all of them, had gone along with it, had carried out Long Feng's orders without question—Katara wouldn't have asked them to pass her a cup of water in the Si Wong.
"The Avatar herself did not ask," the woman acknowledged. "We follow the will of our king—"
"Oh, of course," Sokka said. "And just out of curiosity, when you say 'our king' do you actually mean the tall dorky guy with the glasses? Or do you maybe sort of really mean Long Feng?"
The agents behind the woman who was talking to them had started to spread out—to encircle them, Suki thought, to make it harder for them to run, and there were six of them, two apiece—
The woman sighed. "The will of our king as it should be," she admitted, "as it will be again once he has cast the unbalanced influence of the Avatar aside. We had hoped you would come quietly; but this is taking too long." She tilted her head—almost apologetically, Suki thought—and then raised her voice so the other Dai Li could hear. "Seize them."
All the Dai Li, even the woman who'd been talking to them, moved their feet almost as one—and Suki was no bender, but she'd spent enough time watching Toph and Katara practice that she knew an Earthbending stance when she saw one. Sure enough, the dark solid shapes that had been hanging at the agents' waists came flying at them; and with a split second to decide, Suki crouched and then threw herself into the air.
She hurtled over one pair of the stone things—hands?—sideways, and when she landed, she had her hands on her fan-handles; the second set of stone hands that had been aimed at her was already being redirected even as her feet came down. She hitched her fans up into her grip the wrong way up, solid iron hinge facing out instead of the knife-thin edge, and knocked both stone hands aside with sharp blows before either one could touch her.
"Not again," she heard Sokka cry somewhere off to the side—he didn't have his sword, didn't have his practice fans, and there wasn't any open water around for Yue, her pike still resting against the wall back in the sparring room—
Suki raised her fan-handles and smacked another stone hand away from her out of sheer reflex—they were fast, almost too fast to see coming, and she had to flip over another before she could spare the instant it took to look for Sokka.
He and Yue were pinned down—not by the stone hands that had been thrown at them, which were clamped around their arms, but by the paving stones themselves. The two of them were sunk nearly up to their knees, as though in mud: like they had been back in that courtyard with General Fong, Suki thought, except this time there was no Queen Yuanlin to smack the Dai Li on the shoulder and make them change their minds. Suki—Suki had jumped up, hadn't left her feet on the ground long enough—
As if the Dai Li had noticed the same thing, Suki felt the rock beneath her feet shift; she was lucky, so far beyond lucky, that Sokka had interrupted her in the middle of a session with Yue, because it would have been so much harder to leap like this if she weren't already prepared for it.
She landed harder than she'd meant to, off balance because she'd had to leap so fast—but the Dai Li were having trouble holding Sokka and Yue still, one of them shouting wordlessly for help, and the agent who had been about to launch himself at Suki turned away instead. Suki hefted one of her fans and caught Sokka's eye—she could throw one to him, if he could only get a hand free—
"No!" he shouted at her, as though he knew what she was thinking. "No, Suki—go! Go, you've got to go back and tell somebody—Katara, Li Chen—you've got to—"
For an instant, she hated him for it—for telling her to, for thinking she would. She was a Kyoshi Warrior, a leader; she'd never left any of her girls behind and she wasn't going to leave them either.
Except she had to. There were six Dai Li and only one of Suki; and Sokka and Yue were occupying most of the agents for now, but one good shove further into those paving stones and the Dai Li wouldn't need to concentrate anymore to hold them still. And if all three of them were taken—who would be left to warn Katara? She had to.
The last agent who wasn't struggling with Sokka and Yue lunged at Suki, and Suki struck her sharply in the wrist with one fan and flipped the other fan around to slice at her face. The agent ducked away, and for a moment left a clear space—and Suki darted through it, past her, and then began to run.