Early one morning, a month or so after Sokka's visit, Piandao heard the sharp cry of a salamander eagle. He frowned. Unfolding himself from his meditative pose, he parted the bamboo stalks and stepped out of the grove. There in the courtyard was the royal bird, used only by the Fire Nation aristocracy. Tied under its wing was a black silk parchment-case emblazoned with the royal seal.

Piandao took the message and read it carefully. A shadow passed over his face as he did so. But before he could return to the bamboo grove and compose his reply, his servant Fat hurried into the courtyard to announce the arrival of a visitor.

Following Fat back into the atrium, Piandao froze in surprise. Rising to greet him was a woman in a deep blue dress trimmed with red and gold. It was his old friend, Kayra.

"It's taken you a long time to visit," said PianDao.

Kayra smiled, "You never sent on your new address after you left the Fire Army."

"I was travelling for awhile. Can you forgive my lack of manners?"

"I couldn't have visited anyway. It's only since the fall of Ba Sing Se that I've been able to take home leave. I assume you heard about that, even way up here in the mountains?"

Piandao nodded.

"Not to say we didn't miss your skills in the battlefield. More than a few times," Kayra laughed. "I thought of you often," she added softly.

Piandao allowed his face to crinkle into a smile, and he stepped forward to embrace her.

When he'd first realised it was her, it was like a ghost had stepped out of his past, and Piandao had been overcome by uncertainty. But that uncertainty Piandao was washing away by the moment, replaced by feelings that had lain dormant for thirty years. He took her on a tour of the house. Despite the time that had passed, he could tell that Kayra was still a swordmaster. Every step and look was imbued with deftness and poise. When he remarked on this, they soon found themselves reminiscing on the years they'd fought together, and their shared journey in mastering the sword.

Piandao felt they could talk forever. But there was still the matter of that morning. After showing her around he mustered his courage and told her about the salamander eagle and the letter.

Kayra's brow furrowed. "What exactly does it say?"

Piandao hesitated, then handed it over. "See for yourself."

Kayra took the letter and read:

Master Piandao,

No doubt you heard the news by now, even in the mountains. Ba Sing Se has fallen! The dream of our ancestor Sozin is close to being realised. Yet some Earth Kingdom provinces still resist. Once they fall, there will be new lands to govern. . And I have visions of even greater things than these. This is why I am calling you back.

Piandao, you were a great general of the Fire Nation, but you retired. For thirty years I have permitted you to live in the mountains as a recluse. I hope now that you will accept my summons willingly as a loyal citizen of the Fire Nation, and return to heap even more renown on your name.

FireLord Ozai

"What will you say?" Kayra asked after a pause.

"I don't know yet," said Piandao honestly.

"Try to be polite," said Kayra with a grin.

After asking Kayra to stay as a guest for as long as she wished, Piandao returned to the bamboo grove with ink and paper. He sat in thought for a long time. Finally he began to write.

Your Majesty,

For many years I served your Highness' army and was fortunate to win many battles, despite my lack of talent. Thirty years ago I retired to the countryside.

Now, the truth is that I have become soft. I have devoted myself to painting, calligraphy and gardening. I've forgotten every small thing I ever knew about the sword. Although I am honoured by your majesty's attention, if you could see how I live now, you'd know how useless I would be in your service. I do not dare deceive your Highness in this.

Piandao

By the time he had completed his short note, he was writing by moonlight. Taking a deep breath, he sent the message on its way and went back inside. He found Kayra playing pai-sho with Fat in the main hall.

"There was no need to wait up for me," he said, assessing the game at a glance - Fat's position was in tatters, although this was obvious enough from the humiliated look on his face.

"It was no hardship" said Kayra, placing another piece. "What did you say?"

Piandao grinned. "Mostly I told his Majesty what a doddering old fool I've become."

"So you won't come back?"

"No."

"I see." Kayra seemed to consider this for a moment, her eyes fixed on the pai sho board. Finally she spoke, her voice even and without accusation. "Did I mention that I've become a Fire Army general, Piandao? A moderately respected one even. If you were to reconsider I could use my influence to get you a preferred position in the army again. We could fight together again, side by side. We'd be more famous than any general, any team in the last 100 years. More famous than the Dragon of the West."

Piandao shook his head. "It's not a question of fame or glory. I've chosen a hermit's life. I have nothing left to give the Fire Army."

"Is that so? And you'll stick by that even if the Fire Lord is more… insistent?"

Her gaze drilled into him. Piandao hesitated. He was aware that something dark was being created between them, an unacknowledged secret, a sinister locked box.

"Well, let's see what the Fire Lord says."

Kayra raised a sceptical brow, but said nothing more. Instead she gestured to a pedestal close to the window. On the pedestal was a glimmering sword sheathed in a painted scabbard. "I noticed that as soon as you showed me this room. Of all your swords to exhibit here, why an early piece like that one? Don't think I don't recognise it from our time together, despite the new scabbard."

They walked over to study it more closely. Piandao glanced from the sword to her. Kayra's keen eyes were deep in concentration, as though she could read the sword's history from the swirling blue designs of its sheath.

"I namedit when I completed the scabbard. I called it Deep Lake," said Piandao. "You said that phrase to me once."

"I remember. I remember. " she said quietly. "A great general is like a deep lake, still on the surface, unfathomable beneath…"

Then she turned to him with a wry grin. "Piandao, are you trying to say that you missed me too?"

Kayra stayed on as a guest for several nights. Early each morning they would meet in the courtyard and spar together with bamboo swords. Each day their moves became faster, stronger and shrewder. They finished their sparring sessions panting for breath. One morning, as they sat sprawled in the sparring ground still in their bamboo training gear, Kayra laughed. "So much for your calligraphy and landscape painting. The sword is still your first love. Your true love! I don't believe you want to be a hermit, not in your soul. If anything you must be bored out of your mind here!"

This was as close as they came to putting a hand on the locked box that had been formed by their earlier conversation. Its presence tormented Piandao.

He could barely sleep. But when the day came, and Kayra was there to spar with, to puncture all the reverence and solitude that he had built up around himself… then it was like he'd never been away. He imagined, to his shame, a world in which they left his house to fight together again, and became as close as before. Or even closer. During the day he was elated by this. But at night, his thoughts went back to the box. The secret.

He told himself he was trying to figure her out. Trying to detect any sign of doubt from her in the Fire Nation's mission. He was waiting in desperate hope for any glimmer that she had considered it even once, the unforgivable act. Treason against the Fire Nation. Betrayal.

And all the while, she was measuring him too. The days passed like thunderstorms, exhilarating, shaking him to his core.

But he didn't know what to say.

After decades of study in discipline, of struggle to become wiser, how could he be so indecisive? How could he lose control of his feelings so easily?

That morning, another salamander eagle arrived. Piandao was relaxing on the porch of his courtyard. Kayra was inside. A cold fear held the back of Piandao's neck as he watched the eagle land. Calling Fat, he quickly retrieved the message, asked his servant to hide the bird for the return journey, then retired to the bamboo grove without telling Kayra.

Master PianDao,

I have read your last message, and can only admire your humility. You are a genius strategist, and your skills as a swordsman and swordmaker are renowned throughout our nation.

There is another reason I cannot accept this argument. Even if you truly had lost your talents, you still have the opportunity to demonstrate your loyalty to your sovereign. Loyalty is more valuable than any skill or trait. You say you wish to live peacefully, but I never heard of a dutiful citizen who, when his sovereign called on him, could sit by without feeling ashamed. If you really wish to hide in the mountains, you should at least give up this pretence of wisdom and peace. Indeed, your once legendary name will turn sour in the mouths of all loyal Fire Nation citizens.

Piandao, you cannot deny you are of the Fire Nation. Even the birds and animals know their true home. What about you?

Now Piandao had settled in front of his writing stone in the grove, his mind settled. He listened awhile to the sway and creak of the bamboo stalks and the tidal breath of the leaves rustling in the wind. Then he began his reply.

Your Majesty,

Thirty years ago I retired to the countryside because I was sick of war. I cannot return. I believe I have found my rightful place here, as a hermit. How could a hermit be of service to you? It's true that loyal citizens should help their lord in noble deeds; but a citizen who devotes himself to glory is only using his lord, as a fisherman uses a fishhook. I beg to be left alone to live in peace.

Piandao finished his note, but he couldn't bring himself to return to the house. Instead he continued sitting in the bamboo grove, sitting utterly still.

Indecisive. Cautious. His polite, formal letter was an attempt to placate Fire Lord Ozai. It held on to an insane hope that this life would not be disrupted.

That the day the White Lotus sect called on him would never come. That he would never have to leave this place.

He was scared.

How had fear rooted in his heart?

The creak of the bamboo stalks shifted infinitesimally, like a fish disturbing the flow of a stream, and Piandao looked up. Kayra was there. She looked at him gravely, shrewdly.

"I think I can guess what you've said in your letter," she said quietly.

Piandao bowed his head, looking up under his brows.

Kayra noticed a chopped bamboo stalks. It had been cut in Piandao's fight with Sokka - sliced cleanly through at a sharp angle, so precisely that the point was a sharp spear. She touched it lightly, and a tiny drop of blood flowered on her finger.

"Are you afraid you might lose everything? After seeing you and fighting you again, I don't believe you've got 'soft', like you said before."

"Kayra…"

"I never believed that, and I doubt the Fire Lord has either. So what is holding you back? Painting mountain views and rearranging your rock garden? You can't be serious."

She took a step forward, standing over the kneeling Piandao. "Please tell me the truth," she said softly. "Is the life of a hermit in your own private palace so satisfying? Or is there something else?"

Piandao took a deep breath. He steadied himself.

"I won't go back to the Fire Army. I will never lift a sword for Fire Lord Ozai again."

"I see."

"No doubt you saw through me already."

"If you don't go to them, they'll come here. To arrest you."

"That's very likely."

He still couldn't believe that so much time had passed, yet she had the same hold over him. Her eyes stared into the deep lake of his soul; she'd uncovered his every doubt.

She said, "after you left the army, I thought so much about you. Wherever the army went, I tried to keep up with your journey any way I could. Although you'd left, your fame and glory only grew and grew. As did your skill! Here I was fighting in a real-life war; meanwhile my closest ally, my closest friend had become a travelling scholar. And he had become the master swordsman! I thought so often of joining you. Honestly, some days I would have given almost anything for the training, the sparring,

"Things only really changed for me when the Dragon of the West retired after his defeat at Ba Sing Se. I was stunned that he would abandon the army after his defeat. What a disgrace that was! I started to see your actions in a different light."

"And then, a few months ago, the 'retired' Iroh actually did betray us. He sided with the Avatar against his own people."

"When I heard, I knew I had to come and see you. I hoped you'd be shaken by Iroh's betrayal into action. But the letter had already arrived… and you refused the FireLord."

"I didn't want to believe it. But the truth was already there when you walked away 30 years ago. Piandao, it's a heartless thing to betray your own people. A disloyal thing. An unnatural thing. How can you betray the Fire Nation, Piandao? To turn your back on me?"

Piandao felt a terrible coldness rising up from his chest. His mouth was dry; to form words seemed impossible. But finally he managed to say, "Do you know why Iroh did what he did? He believes the Avatar can end the war. In fact, he had dreamed of helping end the war for decades."

"How would you know that?"

"I haven't a chance of hiding anything from you, I see that now. So let me explain. But before I do…" He looked deeply into Kayra's eyes. "Surely you must have questioned my reason for leaving the Army. You saw what I did. The destruction. The burning villages and untended fields. And the hunger for violence in our comrades' hearts. When you thought of joining me, you must have imagined turning your back on that."

"Are you asking if I imagined betraying the Fire Nation?" Then, "How can you claim to know that the Dragon of the West had planned to betray us for decades?"

Piandao was shaking. It was time to say everything. Even as he spoke he felt overawed by Kayra, standing over him, so poised, so powerful.

"There is a secret order. A global order, that has waited in the shadows for decades. General Iroh is one of its most senior members, but all of us are united in the samw desire - to end this war."

"Nothing I could say will convince you if you haven't felt this already, Kayra. But I have to believe you have felt it too, through the years. When the Order puts out the word, we'll have our chance. To make a difference. To end the war."

He looked again into her eyes and thought he saw the tumult, the confusion in her mind there. Kayra slowly lowered herself into a kneeling position opposite him.

"When did you join this Order?"

"Decades ago."

"And you've waited all this time?"

Piandao nodded slowly. Kayra's hand had gone from her cheek to rest on her knee. She stared ahead into the bamboo, almost unblinking, her face ashen. Impulsively, Piandao reached out his hand and placed it on her cheek.

For a few moments neither of them moved. Now it had all been said, Piandao felt clear-headed and calm. Hearing the word betray from her, he thought, had changed something in him. He hadn't faced it head on before. He hoped she could sense his gratitude somehow. More than anything, he hoped she understood. That she would come with him.

Kayra's eyes followed him as he rose. "They'll arrest you, you know?" she repeated, "As soon as they get that letter they will send a whole battalion out here."

"I know. I've no choice but to leave. Perhaps I should have left years ago. But I'm glad I waited. Because now, we have the chance to fight together again, Kayra. I can't say how much that means to me."

"I'm glad too," said Kayra simply.

The next day the morning air was still and quiet. Piandao dressed swiftly and went through the house towards the courtyard; the house had the crisp, uninhabited feeling that accompanies the morning, before anyone has moved through it. His servant Fat was still asleep.

But something was wrong. Someone had been moving around.

With a growing sense of unease Piandao stepped through the hall, noting a door ajar. He took an ornamental dagger from the wall.

Stepping into the atrium he was greeted by - silence. But then he noticed it.

The sword Deep Lake was gone.

Kayra was gone.

All at once an unfathomable intensity ignited in PianDao. Taking another sword from the wall, he raced to the bamboo grove. He took up a stance by his writing desk, eyes closed. Suddenly arced the blade from its scabbard. Three trunks fell, their branches and leaves scraping and whooshing like ocean foam like ocean breakers. An arc of sunlight appeared on his face. Swinging and swinging, he sliced cleanly through every stem until not one bamboo plant was left standing.

Out of the house rushed Fat, bleary eyed and shocked.

"Pack us two travel bags," commanded Piandao. "We have to leave at once for Ba Sing Se."

A few hours later that day, Kayra returned. She'd used her seniority to take command of the Fire Army battalion she'd encountered in the town, the morning she snuck away from the house. She stood among the fallen bamboo stalks, her heart cracking.

With no way to trace Piandao, the battalion stayed on in his house for the next few days. Kayra ordered every ornament in the house and flower in the courtyard not to be disturbed. On the second day, a message arrived by hawk, written in cypher.

With it was a single pai sho tile. A white lotus.

"What can it mean?" said the lieutenant.

Kayra stared into the courtyard and said nothing.