12

In the morning, I slipped on my robes and washed-out cotton flats.

"How long has it been since you washed those?" the bartender, who had been kind enough to share her bed, asked.

"A few months?" I sniffed my sleeve—sour milk and peaty earth.

She stood, taking the sheet with her, and approached a small closet cut into the wall.

"Take some of mine," she said, picking out a set of deep magenta and charcoal robes, swooping low and with bellowing sleeves ending at the elbows. She handed me a thick belt tipped in black embroidered flowers.

"These are too nice. I can manage with my own."

"Your shoulder is half-shredded and covered in blood," she said, taking the liberty of removing the soiled jacket. "What did you say you do again?"

"Bounty hunter."

She stepped back and frowned.

"I'm joking." She helped me thread my arms through the new top. "I worked as a political advisor, then a bodyguard, then a teahouse attendant. Now, I'm nothing."

"That's quite the demotion. Did someone really hire you as their bodyguard? You don't look—." I couldn't tell if she was trying to insult or compliment me.

"I made for a pretty bad bodyguard."

"How's that?"

"The man I was hired to protect got killed."

We stood before a long mirror; she tied the belt around my waist and let her hand rest there. "That's horrible," she said. I didn't reply. After having worked for the man for a year, I had learned enough of him to feel guiltless in his death.

She helped me braid my hair, which had grown down to my hips, and went so far as to dab hibiscus oil on my neck. I faced her and took her hands.

"Thank you," I said. Before we shared the night together, she had let me bathe in her apartment. I hadn't felt so pampered since my days as Zuko's advisor.

The bartender said that if I were ever in town again, I would have a warm bed waiting for me. I was halfway into the woods when I realized I never learned her name.


As I walked toward Pohuai Stronghold, I tried to prepare myself for what awaited me. I still couldn't make sense of it. Hui had never been the kind to buy into Fire Nation propaganda, even when our father force-fed us the revisionist history and glorified slaughter all Fire Nation children were taught. He tried to absolve us of our "improper" Earth Kingdom educations, but we were rebellious children.

That stormy night, that was the beginning of his efforts, failed as they were.

"I wanted to give you something," he said, unlocking my door.

I wanted so badly to whip past him and bound down the hallway toward freedom, but knew any such effort would be pointless. I needed to wait until we reached port, then my escape could be realized.

Instead, I backed away, clutching again one of the posts of my bed. He lit the fireplace and knelt there, beckoning for me to join him. When I refused to, he opened the box himself, picked up the scroll laid inside, and unfurled it.

"An official declaration of legitimacy," he said, asking for me to again join him by the fire. "Signed by the Fire Lord himself."

Unable now to quash my curiosity, I approached and knelt a few feet away from him. He held onto the scroll, but slanted it in my direction. Because I couldn't read, he recited the words, so clear and simple, declaring me, Fa Su Yi, a legitimate daughter of Admiral Zheng Zhu Ri. Zheng, that was to be my new surname.

Due to the implacable insurgency of the Pohuai rebels, and the dangerous conditions of the child's home, Fa Su Yi is hereby declared the rightful progeny and property of Admiral Zheng Zhu Ri, and shall be granted full Fire Nation citizenry and the inherent rights thereof.

"Progeny and property." Those words stuck out to me. I didn't know what to think, except to feel the fear underlying these last days expand, the nervous throbbing of my heart quicken. I wanted to protest, say that I was no one's property, certainly not his. He had done nothing for me but the cruel act that had brought me into this world. But my words froze on my tongue.

"It means you are protected now," he said, rolling the scroll and placing it back in its box. "You are a citizen now; you will be safe."

It was during these years on the sea that I learned of the great delusion Fire Nation citizens carried over their country's influence on the world. Hatred was played off as concern for the uncivilized savages of the other nations, whose landscapes were wholly untamed without the industrial growth of the Fire Nation. They could truly believe that by conquering our land and stealing our children that they were "protecting" us from our own evil natures. It served as the most significant education of my life, one that proved useful when I met a smoldering young prince ready to upend world order by tracking down the avatar and turning him over to the Fire Lord.

Overcome by anger, I grabbed for the box containing the scroll. As soon as it was in my hands, I thrust it toward the fire. Before it could catch, my father fetched it out of the fire, remarking that the scroll was only a symbol. Fire wouldn't change the fact that I was his daughter by blood and by law.

When I leapt at him, steaming now, disturbing the fire next to me, he raised a single hand and pushed me to the ground.

"Resist if you want," he said, standing over me, "it won't change your fate."