Tinderbox – Part Five
Disclaimer: Nickelodeon owns Firebending and all other Avatar-related trademarks. I own some half-melted candles and an overactive imagination. No profit to see here, folks.
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Zuko watched dawn break over the walls of Chiang Rai. Light crept up past the barricades to mount a direct assault on the rooftops. No quarter was offered and no prisoners were taken. The sun had resumed its conquest of the sky.
It would be nice to think that his wakefulness was the product of military discipline, but the swordsman knew better. Zuko was awake because his injuries wouldn't allow him any peace.
He leaned heavily against the window-frame, caring less for fresh air than the way that sunrise tugged at his sixth sense. Slowly but surely the moon's oppressive calm was seared away, until the atmosphere shimmered with the promise of fire.
The town square – alive with panicked bodies the day before – was eerily empty to his eye. A few brave vendors straggled through the streets but none seemed eager to set up their stalls and commence the call to market. Beginning the day meant confronting the haze of smoke that blanketed the town in uncertainty.
Zuko kicked irritably at the nest of sheets at his feet, and then cast an exasperated look at the figure sleeping on the futon they'd pushed to the other side of the room. In the quiet, Mai's breathing was impossibly loud.
He wasn't sure why he'd agreed to let Mai take over the only serviceable mattress he'd seen in months, beyond the fact that they'd returned late and she'd had knives and he had absolutely no idea how to cope if she had some kind of emotional thing over her missing friends. Mai had woven her own web of deceit. She deserved to lie in it while Zuko had a comfortable evening.
Unfortunately, a lady was still alady, even if she spread salacious falsehoods about you in order to foil your carefully planned counterespionage tactics. Zuko was well read enough to know whether there was any way around it. There wasn't. Fate had cornered him yet again.
No matter. This was a new day. Tension built as the sun started its climb – the possibility of flame longing for shape and contour – and Zuko was tired of waiting around. Respectable people started their day at dawn.
Zuko walked over to Mai's bedside and immediately felt strange about it. In the feeble pink light of morning she looked thin and girl-shaped and remarkably unlike someone hounding him to the ends of the earth. Sure, she was hugging a belt full of knives, but Zuko could appreciate the candor of the gesture. Who didn't like having a blade or two close at hand in an unfamiliar situation? Or in any situation, for that matter?
If half of Mai's daggers weren't suspiciously missing from their holder, Zuko might have forgotten to be wary. He spent a few moments staring at Mai, trying to figure out where her other projectiles might be, before giving it up as a lost cause. He'd pay attention to the way she moved for clues, later.
"It's morning," Zuko announced, loudly and without preamble.
Mai made a noise in the back of her throat and did some kind of weird girl-shift with her hips. Zuko re-evaluated the situation.
"I said, it's morning," he repeated.
Nothing.
Zuko never had this problem with Uncle. Before the injury he'd consistently gotten up with the sun. For a Firebender the sun's positioning was better than any internal clock.
He swallowed the urge to find a stick with which to prod her. Zuko was no coward. The days of his weakness were long passed.
To wit, he reached down shook her by the shoulder.
"You need to wake up."
The swordsman shifted sideways in time to feel something slice through the air a few inches away from his cheek. Last night she'd had better reaction time during their sorry excuse for a battle. Mai must still be drowsy.
"Was that necessary?" Zuko groused, crossing his arms. He was already put-out about the futon situation and now there was a knife embedded in the wall behind where his head had been ten seconds ago. Oh, this just got better and better.
"You shouldn't startle me." Mai leveled a glare at Zuko from beneath her bangs. Then she snapped her attention over to the window.
"The sun's barely up," Mai grated. If possible, the glaring had gotten even worse. She looked as though she'd skewer Agni himself given half the chance. The dark circles under her eyes matched the bruises that mottled the pale skin of her arm.
Feh. It wasn't Zuko's problem if Mai couldn't appreciate mornings. That was between her and the spirits. He was alert and ready to take care of business on far less sleep than she must have gotten.
Mai closed her eyes, and settled back upon her pillow.
"I'm going back to sleep," she declared.
"No, you're not."
"Yes, I am."
"No, you're not," Zuko reiterated. He prodded her shoulder again for good measure. "Your little decoy will probably wake up when I blast out the lock on her door, and you're going to be there to calm her down."
Zuko refused to barge into some random peasant wench's room and make explanations. It was inappropriate. What if she was in a state of undress or conducting some kind of arcane backwater morning rituals? He wasn't exposing himself to potential hysterics or odd plebian tics if he didn't have to. Bad enough that they occasionally accosted with conversations about things he didn't care about while he and Uncle were going about their business.
"You're what?" Mai blinked some of the grogginess out of her eyes. She held the belt of knives to her chest. It probably would have looked more threatening if she hadn't been so rumpled.
"I took precautions to keep you in there," Zuko elaborated. "She'll make a scene if she tries to leave and the door won't open. I'm blasting the lock out."
Mai sat up. Steel flickered into place against Zuko's side, and he repressed a shiver. She held her dagger in such a way that the edge bit lightly into his side. The metal was cold.
"It's five-thirty in the morning, Zuko."
"I'm aware of that."
"Get out of the room."
"Excuse me?" Zuko discreetly shifted his weight so that Mai's dagger would glance off of his lower ribs if she tried to stab him. This latest instance of unprovoked feminine insanity proved that he couldn't take chances.
"Get. Out."
Zuko chose to do his morning stretches in the hallway, while Mai accomplished whatever she needed to accomplish.
---
By the point that Mai emerged from the hotel room, time had dulled her urge to maim Zuko in such a way that he would never awaken anyone at five-thirty in the morning ever again. It had been supplanted by a feeling of grim satisfaction.
Mai had spent the better part of forty minutes re-tying her hair, buffing the chips out of her nails, and cutting her dress down into something that didn't look as though it had traveled through an avalanche. Then she took her sweet time affixing weapons on her person and in a discreet cache under the floorboards. The entire operation took far longer than it needed to.
Mai was patient. She knew that boredom could be far worse punishment than any physical injury.
Eventually the sounds of what must be Zuko's morning exercise routine had become increasingly forceful and erratic. That was when Mai knew she'd gotten what she wanted. When she finally opened the door she was greeted with the sight of Zuko pacing the halls and making faux bending motions at his shadow. Mai had seen a caged tiger-elk act like that, once, before Azula decided that she had tired of the palace menagerie and had all the creatures killed and replaced.
"I'm finished," Mai announced. Perhaps Zuko would protest the way she'd made him wait and then Mai would get to do something amusing that would get blood all over the disgusting ratty brown thing he insisted on wearing everywhere. If Mai was going to be thrown out of bed at spirits-forsaken hours of the morning and expected to function without the chemical aid of black tea, then she had to do something bracing. She was itching for an excuse.
"Good." Zuko ceased whatever he was doing and prowled over to the door to Mai's room. "We have business to take care of."
Frustratingly, Zuko refused to take the bait. He was also right.
"So?"
"Fine."
Their plan of action settled, Zuko pressed his palm against the tin lock he'd sabotaged the night before. Mai knocked politely on the door.
"Lixue?"
Thankfully there was no answer. It would be hard to avoid suspicion if she saw any mysteriously melting metal.
"Lixue, I need to speak with you." Mai raised her voice, double-checking.
A few seconds passed in silence before Mai gave Zuko a curt nod. He made a strange twisting motion with his hand, and after a few moments what had once been a perfectly serviceable lock became a misshapen hunk of scrap metal.
"Your turn," the Prince murmured, stepping away from the door. When he passed her by Mai was startled to feel his knuckles brush against the heavy wool covering her forearm, casual and accidental and feather-light. A person as solid as Zuko didn't seem like he should be capable of such a thing.
Then the surprise passed and Mai's eyes narrowed.
Was Zuko checking her for weapons?
Zuko gestured his impatience at the hold-up and Mai let the matter slide in the interests of not saying anything indiscreet where Lixue might hear them. The Prince might not have the sense to hold his tongue and in any case, if Mai were to be honest with herself, she had to admit that she no idea what she'd say if she were to call him on it. Mai hadn't made any secret of her willingness to draw concealed weapons on Zuko if necessary.
She turned the doorknob.
"I'll leave this to you," Zuko said quietly, manufacturing a retreat to more macho territory. Mai ignored him in favor of opening the door. With the racket they'd been making there was no way that Lixue wasn't awake by now.
"I apologize for-"
Mai's greeting perished on her lips. She had to tell herself very sternly that a Lady of the Fire Nation did not clap her hands to her mouth, or gag, or flee the room simply because she was engulfed in the sickly-sweet smell of congealed blood. Instead she took a deep breath to habituate herself to the stench and then stepped back out into the hallway.
"Zuko," she called out, preempting his escape down the stairs. "There's a problem."
---
Glass crunched under the soles of Zuko's boots, ground down into a fine silicon dust. A stiff breeze chilled the room with the remnants of last night's cold air. Someone had smashed the window in from the outside.
It wasn't all they'd smashed.
Furniture was overturned and towels were strewn about haphazardly – some brown with dried blood. The mirror in the corner was shattered into fragments. Cushions had the stuffing ripped out of them. It wasn't an impressive show of violence, or even an impressive show of destruction, but it was thorough. The soldier in Zuko had to admit that.
Mai had climbed up onto a chair while Zuko took stock of their surroundings. An elaborate dagger protruded from the wall above Lixue's futon, right beside where it had been used to inelegantly scratch 'Hail Fire Lord Ozai' into the plaster. She braced herself against the wall, and pulled it out with an incongruously soft little huffing noise.
Once he was satisfied that no intruders were foolishly waiting to ambush them within the rubble, Zuko walked over to the peasant girl's abused body. This one had knives in bed with her as well, but these stilettos had been used to pin down the cloth straps that restrained her arms and legs. The peasant's shirt gaped open obscenely where the tri-flame symbol of the Fire Nation had been cut into her chest.
The immortal symbol of his nation reduced to sick corporeality by some honorless cur, weeping blood and jagged-edged sadism. Disgusting. Zuko had felt rage before, but nothing like this, and it took every reserve of willpower that he possessed to keep the white-hot fury from sparking out of his blood into the open air.
Zuko brushed the peasant's lank, sweaty hair away from the curve of her neck, and then pressed his fingertips into her clammy flesh. He couldn't prod this one awake. He could, however, check for vital signs.
"She's alive," Zuko told Mai, surprised to feel the faint flutter of a shallow heartbeat.
Mai padded over to the other side of the girl, carrying her newly liberated dagger.
"This is sick," she said. She knelt on the futon and set to work sawing off the gag in the girl's mouth. Her throwing knives wouldn't have been suited for it.
Zuko backed off to give Mai space to work.
"They wanted you."
Mai shook her head.
"They wanted Toph Bei Fong."
"It's not honorable," Zuko said, forgetting how his sister and her friends used to mock him for using that word.
"It's not professional," Mai retorted, and the way she spoke, it sounded like a curse.
"Was this-"
"We're better than this."
Zuko knew she was right.
The gag came free. Mai removed it from the girl's mouth and tossed it into a corner. Then she set to work on freeing the girl's limbs with nimble strokes of her blade. Looming over the scene, Zuko felt overlarge and entirely useless. He went to fetch a jug of water in lieu of being able to do what he actually wanted to, which was find a mask and strap on his swords and unleash some righteous retribution on behalf of the land of his ancestors. Problems he could fight were problems he could solve.
When he returned to the room he righted a table to set the jug on. The peasant might need it if she woke. Mai had picked up a clean towel and was applying pressure to the wound on the peasant's chest.
"They made it too obvious. Unprofessional. This attack was for show," Mai said. She sounded even more detached than usual, as though she'd disconnected entirely from her surroundings. It was unnatural. He didn't like it.
"A show of what? Depravity?"
"I don't know."
She should sound more affected, damn it all. She should sound as though this quagmire were happening to her. Zuko should not be alone in this room.
"It doesn't matter," he said bitterly. "We made the problem and I'm going to fix it. I've had enough."
Sneaking away in the night had been a good plan yesterday. It wasn't anymore. If he ran back to Uncle now Iroh would get that faraway look in his eye that told Zuko he was more disappointed than he would ever willingly say. Zuko hated that.
"You're going to fix it? Please. You're just as naïve as you always were." Mai's tone turned waspish. Her annoyance made Zuko feel better in a selfish way. At least she'd ceased acting like an automaton. "Complicated situations like this are beyond the influence of single person. You can't just charge in and fix it."
"Why not? If I don't, who will?"
"This problem isn't ours to solve."
"Do you see the Avatar coming to do it? These people, if they'd take matters into their own hands instead of waiting on him then they'd be a lot better off." Zuko made a sharp gesture to emphasize his point. "I'm sick of headgames. I don't care if you want to go find your friends and then come back to hunt me. I'll fight my way across that bridge when I come to it, because I'm staying here. You're free to go do Azula's bidding."
Zuko ran out of steam at that point, but for once Mai had no snappy reply. She was staring at him so intently that he felt like she must be looking through him to some foreign horizon he couldn't see.
The swordsman had just called Mai a lackey. Which was of course what she was.
"Please," the girl on the bed muttered in an unsteady voice, deflating the moment. "Y-you've got to-"
The peasant's speech dissolved into a coughing fit. Zuko was glad he brought that water.
"I didn't tell them anything about you, I promise," the girl said, sounding ridiculously proud for someone who looked so broken. "They said to give you a message. This was a message for the Avatar."
Mai took the jug from Zuko and held it to the peasant's lips. The peasant did not drink for long.
"There were three - one with knives, one who didn't speak, and the leader. She said..." The girl's eyes welled up with tears. She was no soldier. She must be overwhelmed.
"Go on," Mai prompted her. "They're not here now."
The peasant clutched at Mai's arms, white-knuckled.
"She said she was a Princess from the Fire Nation. She said that unless the Avatar saves us we're all going to die."
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Author's Note: My goodness! I did not mean for this update to take so long. First I got caught up in writing a separate Avatar one-shot, and then I got caught up in life.