Lucky Day
For Guardsman Quong, life had taken a turn for the worse in Ba Sing Se.
It wasn't that being a Guardsman was a bad life, before now. Being stationed on The Wall, that was a true hardship. Not that Quong had ever been to The Wall- no, he was a respectable Middle Ring boy- but he heard stories. The food was shipped from a military kitchen in the Lower Ring, and the main diet out there was reheated juk and old vegetables. Plus, there were... incidents out on The Wall. No one was allowed to even think of the specifics, but when hard times were upon The Wall, the Earthbenders came back with burn scars on their arms, and sometimes their faces. And sometimes- well, sometimes people didn't come back at all. Six years ago, just before Guardsman Quong had joined the Palace Guard, a whole lot of people didn't come back. The Dai Li had really come down hard on talk, that year.
No, Quong's usual life was much better than that of the poor fools on The Wall. Those sad souls made the poor choice of being born in the Lower Ring. Guardsman Quong was a proud Middle Ring boy, and generations of his family had worn the uniform and guarded the doors at the Palace. It was quietly assumed that he would be a Guardsman, and it came to pass with the sureness of the Avatar Cycle. (That is to say, it was a near miss in modern times after that one incident just before Quong's graduation from the academy, but Father found a way to smooth things over.) Only the best of the Guards were selected for the Palace, and Command had honed the selection process down to such a science that grades and sparring performance were all that were needed. Despite his indiscretions, Quong had always performed well on his official tests, so he had been awarded the armor that the ladies liked even if the helmet was bell-shaped and had a poofy thing on top, and off to the Palace he went.
The main job was making sure that everyone understood and followed The Rules. No talking about the War, especially anywhere near His Majesty, as it might upset the lad's digestion. No one from the Middle or Lower Rings, unless they were in a uniform and had the proper orders, was allowed on the Palace grounds. The lucky Upper Ring'ers were only allowed in with an approved petition or an invitation to a social event, and then they had to be sorted to the proper places, don't you know, because some rooms in the Palace were not for the eyes of mere mortals. (Quong had peaked into a few of those rooms, but he was a just a Guardsman, so he hadn't been able to discern what all the fuss was about, unless fancy pillows with flowers embroidered on them were a bigger deal than he had been led to believe.) Theoretically, someone might try to force entry into the Palace, and that's when the Guard would show what it was truly made of, and display the finest Earthbending the world had ever seen, thank you very much. Practically speaking, though, most of Quong's time was spent checking invitations, glaring at illegally parked carriages, and admonishing the servant girls about what supplies they were allowed to pinch.
That last one was a bit tricky. Official policy was that actually spanking the servant girls, even the cute ones, was against The Rules, but threatening to spank was absolutely all right, so long as the Dai Li didn't hear it, because the robed creeps took such things far too seriously. No need to get a girl made into a new Joo Dee just because you liked the way she looks and wanted an excuse to be stern with her.
It was all so simple. Yet, somehow, Quong's nice world had fallen apart today.
He had been lecturing one of the girls, the one with the soft brown eyes and her hair all done up in a swirl, about pinching discarded candles that hadn't yet melted down to the size of a coin, when the troubles happened. The day before had been busy enough, what with a High Alert being called on account of an "incident" at The Wall, and now today word was that the Avatar himself was in the Upper Ring but didn't have an invitation just yet. Still, it was nothing much to Guardsman Quong. His main concern was that, as he was threatening the cute servant with a spanking, he leaned against the wall because that armor could get heavy, at times, and he misjudged where the wall ended and where the little alcove began. It was all the servant girl's fault, anyway, no matter how soft her brown eyes were, because she had been dusting the urn on the table in that little alcove, and if she had done a better job Quong was sure that he wouldn't have landed on the big pot-thingy and crushed a symbol of the peace between Ba Sing Se and the Si Wong Desert tribes into dusty pieces.
The servant girl had gasped, and run away. Quong had cursed, because he was lying in pieces of urn and table, and he couldn't even remember the girl's name so that he could pass the blame properly.
The crash had brought attention, of course, and the commander had been very sorry that he was going to have to report the incident. He claimed that Quong understood, and Quong was tempted to say that no, he was a little fuzzy on the specifics, but one didn't say such things to commanders. It was only after Quong was on his way and back on patrol that he realized the enormity of the problem.
He hadn't just crushed an urn. He had crushed a piece of Ba Sing Se culture.
The Dai Li were big on culture.
That heavy thought had weighed on Quong all day, plus the usual weight of his stupid-looking armor. It was all he was thinking about later that night, when he was working the door at the King's latest fancy party, checking invitations and making sure that no riffraff crashed the Big Bear Bash. The Dai Li didn't, exactly, handle problems. They specialized in making problems go away.
Quong had a nasty suspicion that he had become a problem, and the Dai Li were going to make him go away.
No more guarding, no more helmet shaped like a bell, no more terrorizing the girl with the soft brown eyes. He thought about this while he did his job like a steam-powered automaton from the Fire Nation, repeating the regular, "Invitation please," line to every partygoer.
Then one went off script, and flashed a shiny piece of paper. "I think this will do."
Quong woke from his waking sleep (however that worked), and looked at the guest in front of him. Oh, rather, it was more than one. The girl in front of him was a child, short and pale but otherwise no different from any other Upper Ring'er. The second girl was taller and older, with darker skin than her companion, and didn't stand quite as gracefully as a lady her age should. The little one was waving the shiny paper, and her eyes were milky but decidedly not soft.
Her paper had the seal of the Bei Fong family in all its glittery-ness.
Oh. This? This was why they needed an intelligent man like Quong on Door Duty. The Rules said you had to have an invitation, yes, but there were Old Rules that superseded The Rules. Even the Earth King bowed to the Old Rules. The Bei Fongs were an Old Rule unto themselves, and the short girl standing there now with a haughty but unfocused expression was probably a cousin to the Earth King himself, seven times removed or somesuch. The Bei Fong name was as good as an invitation, never mind their shiny papers.
But Quong was probably going to be Dai Li food, and never get a chance to see the servant with the soft brown eyes again, and so he decided that he would truly enjoy the power of being a Guardsman before he was made to go away. "No entry without an invitation," he said in his most professional voice. "Step out of line, please."
Oh, the little girl didn't like that! "Look, the Pangs and the Yum Soon Hans are waiting in there for us. I'm going to have to tell them who didn't let me in."
Ooh, the Pangs and the Yum Soon Hans, too? Well, if was going to go down, at least it would be glorious. They would speak for years of how Guardsman Quong ticked off the three richest families in the Earth Kingdom! Perhaps the Dai Li wouldn't even get a chance to make him go away! "Step out of line please," he all but sang.
And wouldn't you know, the girls stepped away. Ha! Take that! Even the Bei Fongs stepped aside when Guardsman Quong said, "Step!" Why was he worrying about the Dai Li? They couldn't handle Guardsman Quong! If Long Feng himself showed up asking about some stupid urn, Quong would show that oily mongoose-adder what being a Guardsman was all about!
More comfortable in his armor than ever before, Quong continued to check invitations. Oh yes, that one could enter, and that one, and that one, too. All invitations in order. And good thing, or these fancy types would have Guardsman Quong to deal with!
That's when Long Feng appeared like a ghost right beside Quong. Without a word, the smart and very, very respectable Grand Secretariat led the Bei Fong girls into the party. Quong barely even remembered bowing. What stuck most in his mind was the cool look on Long Feng's face, and the way the mismatched girls stuck their tongues out at him as they glided by.
Well, at least he wasn't going to be made to "go away" because of a stupid urn.
That was something to be proud of, by the First Mud.
For Guardsman Quong, life would be taking a sudden stop in Ba Sing Se.
END
