5 - Field Trip

Mai felt weird actually doing what she had said she was going to do, which was either a sign of serious issues or proof that she was on the road to recovery. She wasn't sure which was worse.

She had promised Zuko that she wouldn't commit any crimes in order to get herself out of legal trouble, and to be fair, when phrased that way, she could admit that it made a certain kind of sense. Plus, she didn't want to disappoint Zuko. Even aside from the hurt look he'd get in his eyes after he'd asked her so nicely, he had good reasons for it; he had a vision of a world where even Fire Lords obeyed the law, and while her every instinct said he might as well wish for dropped objects to fall up or Ty Lee to sit still for a full hour, she had to admit that it sounded pretty nice when he talked about it.

A tyrant ruler who didn't want to be a tyrant ruler. How did someone like that even get the job? (Never mind that the way most people got jobs in the Caldera was by being related to someone, especially in the royal family.) But Zuko really did want to lead people by example instead of by throwing them in dungeons, and he'd actually managed it (more or less) for a few years now. And he was getting better (more or less) at it every day. He might just pull off this whole 'better world' thing he and Aang were always going on about (more or less- sometimes they talked about something called airball).

It was a major blow against Mai's cynical view of the world. But rooting for people to turn out to be terrible seemed silly and more than a little counterproductive.

So here she was, keeping herself honest.

And to help, Zuko had sent a lawyer.

"Um," Manisha said, clutching her satchel, as they walked the gold-lined streets of the Caldera, "what exactly- um, what is the plan?"

Mai was still getting comfortable with her cousin. She was used to being related to social climbers, prison wardens, military commanders, and in one perversely notable case, a florist. Mother's side of the family had once been nobility, and most of them had never forgotten it. They'd all worked hard to raise their social status, Aunt Mura aside, and then the next generation had carried on by marrying people who didn't have to work at all. Manisha had been a tiny cog in this machine that ate dreams and spat out respectability, but now her would be genocide-committing husband was dead and she was working in Zuko's legal department.

A lawyer, as far as Mai could see, was something like a scholar, and the only people who became scholars were the detritus from important families too squeamish and not firey enough to become a Sage. They were shoved behind stacks of books in hopes that no one would see them doing anything embarrassing like picking their nose or having opinions. But Zuko had sent Manisha to help Mai with her mission, and so now they were a team, the Cousins With M-names Team, each of them using their specialized skills - Mai's metaphorical/literal sharpness and Manisha's knowledge of dumb rules - to learn the identity of the true enemy trying to keep Mai from marrying Zuko.

Together, there was nothing that could stop them. Except-

"I don't have a plan," Mai replied.

"Oh." Manisha nodded as if she expected that, and they walked on in the horrifically warm and sunny weather. Then she added, "Um, why- why not?"

A dozen sarcastic possibilities went through Mai's mind, but that was just an old reflex. She no longer wanted to be terrible to people who weren't among her enemies, or even standing near her enemies. She supposed that included family; after all, she was even tolerating her mother these days.

Instead, she said, "I've never been very good at plans. But we need to find out who Advocate Caldera Yu Sung Saikit's clients are. Zuko thinks we can maybe work something out with them, and since you're a lawyer, I'm going to add that of course we aren't going to do anything illegal to either discover them or compromise with them."

"Oh. Um, thank you." Manisha pushed her spectacles further up her nose. "Thank you for adding- um, adding that last bit. Yes. But, um, how?"

"You're going to like this part." Mai spotted their destination up ahead, and increased her gait.

"Oh, um, good." Manisha trotted to keep up.

"We're doing a field trip to Saikit's house in the middle of the day to see what happens, and probably bug him until he tells me what I want to know or throws me out. I've heard that his offices are in his mansion, so it should only be a little bit rude to harass him there."

"Oh- um, oh no." Manisha sighed in a very familiar way. "I'm not good at- um, at confrontation."

Mai quirked at an eyebrow at her cousin. "You were pretty good at the magistrate's office, dueling Saikit with paperwork."

"Yes, but that's- um, that's law. People are harder. Yes."

"Oh, people are easy. I love people," Mai said without a trace of sarcasm. "The key is just to be scarier than whoever you're talking to."

She approached the gate of Sung Saikit's estate, and was pleased to see that instead of a guard, there were a pair of servants on station. Guards, as she'd learned this week, had very old-fashioned ideas about the purpose of entrances. Servants, though, didn't wear armor, so they took a much more progressive view on impeding the progress of a woman wearing half her weight in sharp metal under her clothes.

She approached the gate and clasped her hands within her sleeves. "I am Harbor Yu Mai, here to consult Sung Saikit."

The servants screamed and tried to hide behind each other.

Manisha said, "Wow. You are scary."

This was actually a bit more than Mai had expecting, but she decided to roll with it. "And-" She pointed to her cousin. "-I brought a lawyer!"

The servants immediately relaxed, and one breathed, "Oh, this is a business visit. Why didn't you say so? Lord Saikit is away right now consulting with a client. Since you're not here to assassinate him, you are welcome to wait in the receiving parlor, or we can notify him of your visit."

"Ooh, parlor. I want that one," Mai said. She made note of the fact that the servants had apparently been expecting her to try to assassinate Saikit, but didn't make a big thing out of it. She'd learned to deal with the prejudice people had against outwardly-emotionless girls in intimidating makeup with a preference for dark clothes and hobbies involving knives. Actually, she kind of enjoyed it. And she was getting the chance to infiltrate her target's house.

Now she just had to figure out what she was going to do there.

Unfortunately, marriage wasn't the most important thing in Zuko's life right now. The main reason he regretted that is because he had an accommodating girlfriend who would completely understand, which had the odd affect of making him want to prioritize marriage to her all the more.

Still, now the whole thing about marriage had spilled over to include security issues, so he could justify making some time in his day for a private meeting in his offices with General Mak. Mak had barely raised himself out of the customary kowtow when Zuko intoned, "General, I have reason to believe that the palace has major security issues, and word of private matters has become common knowledge throughout Caldera and possibly beyond. What to you have to say to that?"

Mak was the youngest serving General in the Fire Army right now, and was widely hailed as a military genius for both this and the fact that he'd been promoted straight from the rank of Second Lieutenant. Zuko and Mak both kept quiet about the real reason being that between the purge of war criminals from the upper echelons and a record number of refused promotions afterward, Mak was the only person willing to actually take the job of leading the Army for the new Fire Lord.

To help counter impressions of youth and inexperience, Mak had grown out his sideburns to curve across his cheeks, and then grew a second set in a confrontational display of virility. Despite there being no complaints over the last few years about his ability to keep the Fire Army running and ready, Mak had recently started growing a third set, and Zuko wondered how many more curved swaths of hair the man could fit on his cheeks before they just blended together into a beard. Perhaps that was the point, a strategic conquest of his own face, something to get the urge to perpetrate an empire out of his system.

Mak, with his ridiculous hair, looked up at his Fire Lord and said, "That makes sense."

Zuko blinked. "What makes sense? The security failures?"

"Yes, your majesty. This palace has a massive staff, never mind all the courtiers and visitors and their traveling staff, so of course there are many avenues for information to leak."

Zuko sighed and rubbed his head. He felt a headache coming on. "And you don't feel this is something that needs to be looked at by palace security?"

Mak gave a crisp nod. "Of course it is, your majesty. I drew up plans, using my studies of military history, to address the matter in one of the two most traditionally successful manners. But you said I wasn't allowed to execute members of the staff for anything but treason and attempts to assassinate you, so I assembled a Strategy Group to take another look at the problem, and they estimate that they'll have a solution within another three to five years. In the meantime, I had the Crimson Guard ask the servants very nicely not to tell their friends any national secrets."

Sadly, that sounded all too plausible. One of Zuko's biggest difficulties as Fire Lord was getting his military to look at the world as something other lots of free land they could just take and the people in it as something besides targets of varying height, shape, and defensive capabilities. They were trying, sometimes admirably, but still had a long way to go. "You said that was one of two known successful solutions. What's the other?"

Mak said, "Permission to shrug, your majesty?"

"Granted."

Mak shrugged. "Traditionally, the Fire Lady is ultimately in command of the palace staff, and they used a combination of personal charisma and coordinated misinformation campaigns to make the 'gossip scene' into their own personal counterintelligence division. The most successful Fire Ladies were even able to use the apparatus to accumulate intelligence on Caldera society, bolstering the Fire Lord's political efforts."

Zuko blinked. "Fire Ladies did all that? But we haven't even had a Fire Lady since Azulon's wife Ilah died. That was decades before I was born."

"Yes, and the practice actually stopped before the Lady Ilah ever married your grandfather, so her main concerns were simply the continuation of the Royal Line and the regular duties of the servant staff."

Zuko knew he probably wasn't going to like the answer, but part of being Fire Lord was asking questions that would give him indigestion. "Why?"

"According to Fire Lord Sozin's secret journals that you shared with the war council, he was worried about Fire Ladies having a power beyond the Fire Lord's control, calling it too strong a potential for betrayal. And- uh, some of his writings also indicated a belief that any Fire Lord who needed his wife's help to keep the Royal Foot Masseur from gossiping is a 'sissy boy,' to quote the term."

"Of course." The headache Zuko had been anticipating arrived in his skull like a Water Tribe friend who didn't understand why feet don't go on tables. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

Mai was surprised to find that Saikit's mansion - or, at least, the receiving parlor where she and Manisha had been stashed to wait with tea and light snacks - was just as nice as the one her parents used to have right across from the palace.

Not that she'd thought Saikit would have a run-down house. Of course such a prominent and successful Advocate would have a grand, well-maintained place, especially if he met with clients here. It's just that she hadn't expected to find all her old furniture here, looking just as nice as it had in the home that had been sold when her father went into debt funding a terrorist organization.

Manisha asked, "Are you- um, are you sure?"

Mai got up from the chair she'd been provided and turned it upside down, revealing a number of deep but clean gouges in the underside. She took one of her razor disks out of her sleeve, and showed how one of the blades fit perfectly into a cut. "I used to do target practice on these. Why would a successful lawyer own chipped, second-hand furniture from a traitor?"

"Ooh," Manisha said, "maybe he- um, maybe he helped Uncle Ukano. Um, helped him commit treason, I mean. Yes."

"By buying his old chairs?" Mai supposed it was theoretically possible, but she would have thought a treasonous lawyer could be put to better use. Arguing that Azula shouldn't be a wanted criminal, for example, or at least getting the 'New Ozai Society' thugs out of jail. Maybe even suing the Earth Kingdom for emotional damages for not losing the war.

Of course, it could be one of those unlikely mixtures of odd and innocuous. Perhaps, back when Father and the New Ozai Society had attempt to instigate a rebellion - - and Zuko had gotten so worked up over his sister's return that he had ordered his troops to break into the houses in the Caldera looking for clues or something - - Saikit's furniture had gotten broken. And then he needed to replace it quickly so he could host his clients, so he bought from Father's fire sale. And he never got around to buying proper new stuff. And if Mai wished really hard, maybe she could fly like Appa.

As she thought about it, she poured a cup of tea and helped herself to some of the miniature cherry tarts that had been set out.

By the third tart, she was fairly certain she was being watched.

She maintained her formal posture, the one that Mother insisted aided in digestion so that she'd never have a rumbly tummy around important people, and discreetly scanned the parlor. Aside from all the furniture she recognized, there didn't seem to be anything sinister- no eyeholes in the woodwork, no screens that people could be hiding behind, not even a metal dragon sculpture that could double as a listening-device. Either she was being paranoid, or all the Lady Rei's Adventures novels she had read as a child had lied about the tools of spycraft.

Then she noticed the young teenage girl peeking through an ajar door and breathing a little too heavily.

Their eyes met.

"Hi," Mai ventured.

The girl pushed the door open a little more, revealing a rectangular cross-section of her hair, face, and clothes. She said, "Hiiiiiiiiiii," and giggled.

Aside from the face, which was either too heavily made-up for her age or blushing fiercely, there was a certain familiarity to the girl's appearance. Such as the way her smooth hair was was done up in ox-horn buns and twin-tails that rested on her shoulders. Or the way her robes favored black with some dark red for contrast. Or, just to name a completely random example, the way she was fondling a heavy kitchen knife as though it was a stuffed rhino.

Mai had to admit that it was a better likeness than the version of her perpetrated by the Ember Island Players. That didn't make it any less creepy, though, especially with the knife.

Still, if there was anything Mai was good at, it was keeping a metaphorical mask on her true feelings. She lifted the teapot, made sure the girl's grip on the knife was casual, and asked, "Care to join us for some tea?"

And, if this turned out to be a danger of some kind- well, if there was anything Mai was great at, it was throwing knives at people's heads.

The girl blushed even harder all the way to her ears, nodded, and approached.

Zuko's headache was much improved by reading the write-up of the findings of the analysis of the laws of Mai's criminal status. The headache was bigger, heavier, and more throbbing, which was definitely much improved from its previous performance. He just wished he could find something to make it feel better.

It seemed there were a number of eligible punishments for people who had trespassed in the palace, some of them quite light. That was good, because it meant that Zuko wasn't obligated to round up all the fangirls who'd been caught attempting to scale the walls - or, in one memorable incident, dig under - and have them executed. Unfortunately, Mai hadn't done anything relatively sane like try to climb the palace's outer walls in broad daylight; she'd attempted to pass through the main gate while armed, which according to ancient law made her an invading army, albeit a very tiny one, and that meant she had to put to death.

Fortunately, according to the analysis, Manisha had found that there were no extant laws limiting the ways the Fire Lord could order someone's death (the one and only thing Zuko had to thank Azulon for, it seemed), so he signed an directive for Mai's death by old age and was able to settle the matter.

That just left the list of one hundred and six other criminal accusations raised against her so far, and the investigations were still ongoing. In fact, they'd just gotten started. It turned out that Mai was much more deviant than anyone had ever expected, including the people who had sold her knives. She'd been accused of such horrible criminal violations as - and here Zuko picked one from the bottom of the list at random - allowing part of her shadow to fall on a brick on the grounds of the Coronation Temple on a holy day.

Zuko's lawyers had stressed that proving many of these crimes was unlikely, including the ones about abetting her treasonous father, and given his good relationship with the Caldera magistrates, they probably wouldn't choose to err on the side of cynicism and convict Mai in the absence of evidence. (Zuko made a note to pass a law saying that only unambiguously guilty people could be convicted of a crime.) But until the cases were resolved, the hold Saikit had requested on any marriage applications that would make her Fire Lady could still stand.

On the one hand, Zuko hated this because it kept him from doing what he wanted and that made him very angry. Aang and Katara had stressed to him that his feelings, even anger, were valid and it was okay to feel them. That didn't make him feel better, though, because he was still angry. Being okay with being angry wasn't as nice as not being angry at all, but he supposed at least he didn't need to feel guilty about it, although with a headache this bad, he had a tough time feeling more than one emotion at a time anyway.

On the other hand, given what General Mak had told him, he could start to see why it was so important that the Fire Lady be of unimpeachable character. When these laws had been passed, the Fire Lady had controlled the entire social fabric of the Caldera, the home of the Fire Nation's entire leadership, or at least knew who was paying bribes to who. There had to be some accountability. The system was just being abused by people who valued its inner-workings over its actual point, which was always a sign of a particularly effective system.

It was not unlike how honor had been abused Sozin's Fire Nation.

Zuko could almost feel like there was a path to victory somewhere in this view of things, but trying to identify it upgraded his headache to the gold-plated deluxe version.

Maybe Mai would be able to find something to help. Or at least kiss his head and make it better.

The girl dressed like Mai turned out to be named Sung Lijing. She was Advocate Saikit's daughter, thirteen, and to quote her directly, "I'm your biggest fan."

Mai swallowed an entire cherry tart without chewing (her fifteenth) and said, "I didn't know there was much competition."

Lijing's smile faltered for just a moment. "Well, sure, you have your critics. But a bunch of the other girls at the Academy agree that you're one of the better role-models for being rebellious that we know, because you committed treason and turned against your evil father but you still dress nice and have such pretty hair! But I keep trying to tell the girls how you're even better than that! With the knives, and the romance, and sometimes your sarcasm is even funny! Hee hee!" She ate a cherry tart without chewing, just like Mai.

Mai herself took a sip of her tea to cover her urge to run screaming out of the house. On the one hand, she appreciated actually having fans. On the other hand, she didn't want to be skinned and worn as a suit.

She leaned over to Manisha and whispered, "What do you think?"

Manisha, who had gone pale and even more withdrawn since Lijing had joined them, mumbled, "Um, well, uh, I think I can- um, get her on copyright infringement. Yes."

"What's a copyright?"

Manisha blinked at her. "It's probably better you don't know."

Mai turned back to Lijing, who was hoisting her chair above her head. Mai got up and was about dodge out of the way, but Lijing lowered the chair to reveal the underside with all the blade marks.

"See," Lijing giggled, "when my dad asked me to decorate the receiving parlor so that his clients would have somewhere nice to wait, I bought all the furniture from your old house! Sometimes I sit in here, practicing with my knife, and it's like I can feel your essence rising up into my body!"

Mai chose not to consider that. "Wow, such attention to detail, too. You arranged it all the same way."

Lijing nodded. "Yes! I talked to some of the ladies who stand outside the palace screaming for Fire Lord Zuko to seduce them. They'd peeked into your house a few times back when you first started dating him, and they were able to tell me where everything is supposed to go."

"Wow," Mai said. She tried to think of something else, but eventually decided that the best choice was just to repeat, "Wow."

Manisha handed her a stack of papers from the satchel.

Mai whispered, "What's this?"

"Forms for restraining orders. Um, if you need more, I can make copies. Yes."

Mai put them aside where they wouldn't get messy and finished her tea. "So, Lijing, have you heard about your father's latest case?"

"No. He says I don't have enough room in my head for matters of law." She lost all her cheer. "I don't think he liked getting second-hand furniture. Even though it's hardly worn where there aren't all the cut marks. And no one can see those, anyway."

Mai leaned forward. One of her special talents was telling her that this was something to pay attention to. Everyone always focused on how good she was at throwing knives, but there was a difference between hitting a target and hitting a target in a battle against an Airbending master. Mai's other talent was intuition for when and where to throw, and her instincts were telling her that a target was presenting itself.

So she said, "Why did your father have you handle the decorations, then?"

Lijing drooped even more. "Well, my mother died before I can remember. And he's hopeless at things like this. Have you seen his hair? And he refuses to grow a beard. He'd be dressed like a colonist if it wasn't for me. He knows all about law- he loves it, and was so excited when Fire Lord Zuko talked about restoring the Fire Nation's honor!" The smile snapped back onto her face.

Mai had the urge to check that they were talking about the same Sung Saikit, but decided that it would ruin the mood.

Lijing continued, "That's why I admire you so much! You were the one to see that Zuko is our future and fight for him! And you're very stylish, a true model of everything a woman is supposed to be! When I heard the story about you defying Princess Azula at the Boiling Rock, I knew I'd found my hero!"

"Oh, thank you." Mai picked a smooth little expression of mild cheer from her arsenal, put it on her face, and said, "So I take it you haven't heard that your father is blocking my marriage to Fire Lord Zuko by accusing me of a legion of crimes?"

Lijing blinked. "Did you commit the crimes?"

Manisha immediately lifted a hand. "Do not answer that in a definitive way! Um."

Mai looked back to Lijing. "I don't recall, ahem, but a lot of them do sound like me."

Lijing giggled. "That's so sizzling! You're even more of a bad girl than I thought! Wait until the others hear about this! And still with such an elegant sense of style!" She smoothed her hair. "Did you notice mine? It's just like yours!"

Mai sighed. "I know. It's very nice. But, you know, don't have to dress like me if you want to be- er, sizzling."

"I- don't get it."

Mai reached out and put a hand on her cousin's shoulder. "I admire Manisha here, and her hair is a mess and she can barely talk. But she's the smartest person in Zuko's legal department, and she's saved me about a thousand times since this whole criminal mess started. She even gave me forms for a restraining order in case you're a complete nutjob. She's officially my favorite cousin."

"Oh." Manisha raised hand to her mouth. "I- um, wow. Um, thank you. You're- um, you're my favorite, too. Yes."

"Great." Mai motioned vaguely in the direction of a house in the Caldera that used to attempt to contain seven identical martial-artist sisters. "And of course you have to know about my friend Ty Lee-"

"Of course," Lijing chirped, "I tried to get my friend Sakura at school to dress like her so I could have a Ty Lee just like you."

"-so you know," Mai continued with a suppressed shudder, "that she's nothing like me in style, personality, shape, or universal outlook. But she might be my favorite person in the whole world. It's the same with my other friends, too: Suki, Aang, Toph, Sokka, Katara. My Aunt Mura is nothing like me, but I love her like a mother. And that's not even getting into my gruff, ugly warden uncle, who I used to wish was my real daddy."

Lijing shook her head. "That's nice, but- why are you telling me these things? Should I write it down to be more like you? I should write it all down!" She started to rise out of her chair-

Mai grabbed her wrist (and was relieved to find there was no dart-launcher under the sleeve). "My point is that you can be like me, if that's what you want, without becoming me. You can be you. The best kind of you."

Lijing blinked. "Really?"

"Really. You're special just because you're you, but we can all still become the best possible version of ourselves based on what we learn and how we grow."

Manisha clapped. "Um, very positive. And nice."

Lijing nodded. "Can- um, can you show me how?"

Mai put on her sharpest smile. "Only if you do what I say and help me defeat your father so I can marry Zuko. Otherwise, I'll leave you as a weird little pretender with great cherry tarts, and hit you with so many restraining orders that you won't be able to inhabit the same nation as me."

Lijing blinked. Then she squealed and kicked her feet in the air in delight. "This is so sizzling! I'm in!"

"Um," Manisha (of course) said, "this isn't going to be illegal at all, is it? Because- um, because I'm a lawyer."

Mai considered. "No. But probably completely unethical."

Manisha wilted in relief. "Oh, good. That, I can handle. Um, yes."

TO BE CONCLUDED