Chapter 23
I give you my word.
The words reverberated in Zuko's mind even as the meeting turned to more mundane topics.
Mai didn't make promises lightly. And what she had just promised…
Maybe it was the lack of sleep or how long it had been since they had truly been together, but he couldn't get the implications of that statement out of his mind. She had promised the Council she would provide heirs to the throne. That she would bear his children. Sure, it had seemed like they were headed in that direction last night, but for her to voice the idea in front of others, giving her word. It was heady stuff.
Minister Yuzu droned on about the economy, but Zuko couldn't focus. His eyes kept returning to Mai. She balanced a shuriken on the tips of her fingers, gazing intently at it rather than at him, but her cheeks held the faintest hint of pink.
He snuck a hand under the table to graze the fingers of her other hand, and she glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes under the cover of bangs and lashes, a smirk playing at the edges of her lips. Her fingers twined with his, cool and smooth, and his entire awareness condensed to the feeling of the delicate patterns she traced across his skin.
"Fire Lord Zuko!"
He jolted back to the meeting, realizing with embarrassment that he'd been staring at their joined hands for who knew how long.
"Yes, Minister Yuzu?" he said, clearing his throat. "I'm afraid I missed your question."
Several of the ministers chuckled, and a few even leered at Mai. The lecherous geezers. How dare they.
"Enough of this," Minister Ito slammed his fist on the table. "This Council will not be derailed because of the Fire Lady. If you cannot focus on the business of the Fire Nation with her around, My Lord, I must ask that she leaves."
Zuko seethed. "Mai is not leaving. My distraction stems from my lack of sleep, not from her."
No one at the table believed that.
"Actually," Mai said, standing up suddenly, "I have other things I'd much rather be doing."
He reached over and grabbed her wrist. "Don't go," he murmured so only she could hear. "I don't care what they say."
"Neither do I," she said in a normal voice. "But I already had plans to go to the temple with Ty Lee this morning, before we knew you would be back. Focus on this now." She leaned down to give him a soft, lingering kiss, as much for him as for the Council, then whispered as she pulled out of his grasp, "You can focus on me later, when they aren't around to watch."
Zuko stared at the door for several moments after it closed behind Mai until Minister Xu cleared his throat.
"My Lord? If we could resume?"
He shook his head to clear it and turned back to the table.
"Right," he said, forcing thoughts of her out of his mind and wishing he had a strong cup of tea to help him refocus. "What is the next item of business?"
"I believe," Xu said dryly, "there was the matter of a dragon in the palace. Perhaps you could explain yourself."
If anything could drive Mai to the recesses of his mind, it was this. He sat up straighter and put on his Fire Lord face.
"His name is Druk, and the Sun Warriors have graciously gifted me with him."
"I'm sure we are all gratified to see a dragon in the Fire Nation once again, and especially to see a Fire Lord capable of subduing one. But My Lord. Do you not see the danger of this?"
"My uncle is with him now. The Dragon of the West is better suited than anyone else in the palace to care for him in my absence."
"You mistake my meaning, sire. Have you forgotten your bout with dragon pox? Or the epidemic raging through the Sun Warriors?" Minister Xu's eyes flashed fire. "Think of the havoc this dragon could wreak on the Fire Nation!"
"I would never knowingly put my people at risk. The Water Tribe healers cured him of the pox and cleared him as safe to return to the Fire Nation."
"So they say," Yuzu frowned. "But can they give us assurances? What is to prevent the disease from recurring? We know so little about dragon pox. You must think beyond the quick and easy solutions, My Lord."
"I agree," he said. "Which is why as soon as he has finished their inoculation campaign with the Sun Warriors, Avatar Aang will bring it to the Fire Nation so that everyone can have a measure of protection if Druk becomes reinfected."
"Inoculation campaign?" Zhou asked. "What does that mean?"
"When I had the pox, Avatar Aang told me that before the genocide, the Air Nomads used to inoculate their children against the dragon pox. He tried to replicate that process with the Sun Warriors, and so far it appears to be working."
Zhou scowled. "You seem far too comfortable trusting Water Tribe healers and Air Nomad folk remedies to protect the Fire Nation."
A part of Zuko really felt for Zhou. The old man was born towards the end of Sozin's reign, had been fed Fire Nation propaganda for nearly his entire life, and despite being a strong supporter of Zuko's, held a view of the other nations that was decidedly backwards. It must be hard for him to come to terms with the changes Zuko was making.
But a much bigger part of Zuko was tired of fighting against the bigotry and revisionist history.
"Maybe if the Fire Nation hadn't hunted the dragons to near extinction, our population would all have immunity to the pox from childhood exposure, and we wouldn't have to rely on other nations to rescue us from problems of our own making."
Zhou made a noise of distaste deep in his throat, but didn't reply.
Zuko looked around the table again, catching the eyes of each of his ministers. "I assure you," he said firmly, "I would not have brought Druk to the Fire Nation if I thought he posed a risk to the population. I am doing everything in my power to safely reintroduce dragons to our nation."
"And I applaud you for it, My Lord," Ito said. "I never thought we would see dragons again in the homeland." He stood and bowed deeply. "You truly are the greatest Fire Lord we have seen in our lifetime."
The other council members followed suit, even Zhou, though he did not seem quite as enthusiastic as the others.
Flattery, Zuko reminded himself. It was all flattery. But he couldn't help the swell of pride and the uncharacteristic smile that lit his face.
After the meeting, the ministers and other courtiers loitered in the hallway, each wanting a word with Zuko, until he despaired of ever getting free of their clutches. At last, he made his way over to Hinata, who was engaged in a heated debate with Lady Anzu in the shadow of a pillar near the edge of the space. Hinata was glaring at her and shaking his head while she clutched at his arm and appeared to be pleading with him. When Hinata spotted Zuko, he pushed Lady Anzu off of him and smiled in relief.
"Fire Lord Zuko," he said, perhaps a bit louder than was necessary. "I've been looking for you."
Anzu pouted at Hinata before bowing to Zuko. "If you will excuse me, My Lord," she said. "I have urgent business to discuss with Minister Ito."
Zuko watched Hinata practically seethe as his eyes followed her as she linked her arm with Minister Ito's and reached up on tiptoes to whisper in his ear. Ito's usually stern face transformed as he laughed, his cheeks flushing, and he put an arm behind Anzu's back and escorted her out of sight.
"Did I miss something?" Zuko asked dryly.
Hinata's head snapped back, and he worked his jaw. "Nothing you need to worry about." Then he muttered, so low Zuko almost didn't hear it, "Wish she wouldn't worry about it."
"You worry about me enough. Let me worry about you every now and then. We're friends… right?"
"I like to think so," Hinata smiled. "But seriously, it's probably no big deal. And if it does turn out to be important, you'll be the first person I tell."
Because Zuko trusted Hinata, he let the matter drop. "What did you need me for?"
"Your uncle wanted to begin construction of a pen and stall specifically designed for Druk, but he wanted you to approve the design before he okayed the project."
"Of course," he said, and started for the stables with Hinata.
They threaded their way through the crowd, passing off courtiers with promises to speak with them at a later time. Once they had escaped the throng, they picked up their speed. Not that it was an urgent matter. But somehow when it came to Druk, there was something that made both Zuko and Hinata overeager. Some boyish part of their beings that had never fully grown, perhaps, or an innate love that firebenders had for the creatures that had brought their gift into the world.
But they had to slow down when they passed the courtyard and heard Kiyi calling Zuko's name. She threw herself into his arms with a flying leap, and he grinned.
"Hey! I missed you," he said, ruffling her hair.
She turned up her nose at him. "More than you missed Mai?"
"It's not a contest," he laughed.
"Well Mom says that-"
"That's enough, Kiyi," his mother said sharply, and Zuko noticed that her cheeks had reddened.
He inwardly groaned, his good mood dampened as he remembered all the problems he'd returned to. First the Council and now his mother. He had assumed that after the wedding everyone would get over their misgivings about Mai, but it seemed they were all as steadfast in their dislike as before. How long would it be before they would accept her as his wife and their Fire Lady?
"Well. No matter what Mom says," he said, projecting his voice a little more than was necessary for Kiyi's benefit, "You and Mom and Mai are the most important women in my life. I love you all, and I missed you all. I hope you were able to get to know Mai better while I was gone?"
"Yes!" She slid out of his arms and clasped her hands together in excitement. "She and her friends took me and Tom-Tom to the temple to practice breathing. Then, on the way home, we got attacked by these masked people and Mai and Ty Lee and Suki and Sokka were totally amazing fighting them off." She pantomimed throwing weapons and hand-to-hand combat. "Tom-Tom was scared. But I wasn't."
"I'm sure you weren't," he said grimly. "You have no sense of self-preservation."
"Like some other children of mine," his mother said, raising her eyebrows. "Never seeing reason. Headstrong to a fault."
"Sometimes headstrong is what the world needs. Like you always used to tell me, the honorable never need to hesitate."
"Don't quote proverbs to me!" She shook her head. "I know you have done a lot of good. But I'm your mother. I want what is best for you. It kills me to see you suffer. In any area of your life."
She wasn't even trying to be subtle.
"I'm not suffering. You would see that if you could look past your biases."
Her bottom lip trembled, and she turned away from him. It pricked at his conscience a little to upset his mother, but everything he'd said was true. One day she would see that.
"Zuzu?" Kiyi looked between the two of them, realizing that the conversation wasn't about being scared in battle anymore, but not understanding what it was about, either.
"Come on." He gently turned his mother around and grasped Kiyi's hand in his. "I have someone to introduce you both to."
The rest of the day was a blur. After seeing to the preparations for Druk, Zuko worked into the evening in his study, eating his dinner with Hinata while poring over the various items of business he had missed while he had been with the Sun Warriors.
He stood up to stretch after a particularly boring document on the division of agriculture across the Fire Nation and yawned. He rubbed his eyes, feeling the lack of sleep from the previous night acutely. The sun had just set, but the pile of work he had left was still substantial. He lit the candles with a wave of his hand and sighed.
"Can you let Mai know that I will probably have to sleep in the stable with Druk again? I don't want her waiting up on me."
"Of course."
Hinata bowed and took his leave, and Zuko returned to his work. The next scroll discussed planning and costs for the upcoming Fire Lily Festival. The planning crew had cut back significantly on costs because of the expense of the wedding, and Zuko worried that people would complain about its small scale. But royal coffers hadn't yet stopped shrinking from the fallout of the war, and they simply could not afford a full scale festival this year. Maybe if they could get the economy back on track by the Fire Days Festival, they could go all out for that?
He pinched the bridge of his nose, knowing that was unlikely. But something had to give eventually, right? The Fire Nation economy couldn't continue this freefall indefinitely. Maybe if the harvest was good this year, exports could finally recover to where they were before the war. That would help. Some.
The door creaked open just as he was making some minor changes to the festival plans. "Just a moment. I'm almost done."
"Zuko."
Something in Hinata's voice made his heart freeze. The brush dropped from his hand with a clatter as he pushed his chair away from his desk. He had never seen Hinata's face look so grave before.
"No one has seen Mai or Ty Lee since they left for the temple this morning."
The first thing Zuko did was send a messenger hawk to Aang. Mai might need Katara's healing powers, and even if she didn't, he couldn't let this assassin run free anymore. It was time to assemble Team Avatar.
Toph wouldn't be able to make it, but with Sokka and Suki already in the palace and Katara and Aang on the way, it would have to be good enough.
Not to mention Hinata, who knew as much about the attacks as anyone.
"Bring me up to speed," Zuko asked him, once he had fetched Sokka and Suki. "What do we know about the last attack?"
"The assassins aren't talking, so it's hard to say. We haven't been able to link them to any of our suspects yet. I do have another, but…"
He hesitated, and Zuko pounced on it. "What? What is it?"
"It's just a theory, but Lady Anzu thinks-"
"Lady Anzu? What does she know about this?"
"Nothing!" Hinata snapped, before grimacing. "Sorry. I just mean that she's not involved. I'm certain of that. But she has a theory that one of your ministers is."
"Which one?" Suki asked, just as Sokka said, "What, exactly, makes her think that?"
"Ito," Hinata said. "She overheard him talking with a kid near the temple the day of the attack about-" He shut his mouth, blushed, then coughed. "About your, uh, marital arrangements."
Zuko winced. Lady Anzu, the notorious palace gossip, was just about the last person he would have wanted to find out about that particular secret. But then he remembered.
"Is that why she went off with him this morning?"
"Yes." Hinata scowled. "She was going to try to get more information out of him. I told her not to, but she said it would be easy. That she could get an old man like him to tell her anything."
"I don't doubt she could," Suki said archly.
"What do you mean by that?" Hinata snapped.
"It seems like she already has more than one man in the palace wrapped around her little finger." She raised her eyebrows in Hinata's direction, and he blushed deeply.
"She can't help that she's nice to look at."
Zuko closed his eyes and blew out a breath. "I thought you told me she was a suspect and that you were looking into it. But instead you were too busy looking at her pretty face to-"
"I wasn't distracted!" he insisted. "This is a matter of life and death for the Fire Lady. I'm strong enough to withstand a bit of flirting to get to the truth."
"So she was flirting with you?"
"Yes, but that's only because-" He stopped speaking abruptly. "Look, it doesn't matter. We're getting off topic. I only brought up Lady Anzu because of what she heard Minister Ito say. Can we focus on that?"
"Fine," he agreed. Every minute wasted on a tangent was less time he had to find Mai. "But I don't see how this ties Ito to the assassination attempts. All it proves is that he was the one who told the Council about our agreement.' "
"The whole Council knows?" Sokka winced. "Sorry, buddy. That's rough."
"It's not important," he said, waving a hand dismissively. "Mai and I worked things out last night, so it's not even an issue anymore."
"Worked it out, did you?" Sokka grinned, and Suki whacked him on the head.
"Sokka, Mai is missing!"
That sobered him up immediately.
"Sorry," he said, abashed.
"I'll admit, the connection isn't clear to me, either," Hinata said. "But every other lead we've followed has been a dead end. It certainly couldn't hurt to look into it."
"That could take hours." Zuko could think of a hundred ways the assassin could harm or kill Mai in that time.
"Yes, but we can all walk and firebend at the same time."
Sokka harrumphed. "Speak for yourself."
"I mean that investigating Ito doesn't have to be the only thing we do. Some of us can look into that while the rest of us search for Mai."
Suki nodded. "The girls and I can do the searching. Ty Lee is missing, too, and the Kyoshi Warriors would do anything for one of our own. We'll do everything we can to find Mai for you, Zuko."
"I'll bring Ito in for questioning," Hinata said. "I need a signed warrant from you, but it shouldn't take long after that."
"And I'll go over all the evidence we have from the previous investigations," Sokka said. "Maybe we overlooked something that could be helpful."
Zuko managed a weak smile. What had he done to deserve such good friends? It wasn't that many years ago when he'd had no one but Uncle he could count on.
He just hoped all the extra help could help them find her in time.
Mai woke to pain: her head, her side, her right foot, and her right hand. She tried to open her eyes, only for her vision to swim in a mix of blinding light and darkness before dimly focusing on her surroundings. Then the awful truth hit her: She had no idea where she was.
She was sprawled against the wall in a broken down room. Several wooden barrels partially blocked her view of anything else in the room. Her dress was caked with dried blood in several places, including at her throbbing right hand. She tried to close it into a fist, but the pain made her feel sick to her stomach and black spots dot her vision. Biting her lip, she choked back the sob that tried to escape.
When she had finally fought down the nausea and pushed back the pain, she closed her eyes and cast her mind back for a memory - any memory - that would explain her situation. She had left the meeting that morning to go with Ty Lee to the temple and spent some time there meditating and practicing with their chi. Then they'd set off for home.
Or had they? This was where the memories grew fuzzy. A detour, a nice cup of tea, a heated conversation - and then nothing. Nothing that would explain the blood or the broken hand or the complete absence of Ty Lee.
With her still functional left hand, she did a quick inventory of her weapons. A good number of them were missing, especially the visible ones. But she had enough hidden weapons that she could probably fight her way out of whatever situation she found herself in.
Probably.
Possibly.
The first item of business was to determine how much danger she was in. The second was to figure out where she was. And the third? She'd worry about that after she'd accomplished one and two.
She cut strips off the bottom of her clothing and bound her injured hand and foot as best she could with her non-dominant hand. Then, with a throwing knife at the ready, she crept out from behind the barrels.
"So you're awake," came a voice from her other side.
Mai's head swerved fast enough to cause another rush of pain, and she came face to face with someone she had hoped never to see again.
"You," she gasped, and held her weapon at the ready.
Fire bloomed on the woman's hands, and she chuckled. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."