-Danger,Deceit-
Book 01.: Fire Nation
Chapter .01: POLITICS

(2nd Year of Zuko, Mid-Summer)

[A storm announces itself in the rustling of leaves.]

It could not be right, a Fire Lord having to hide in his own palace just to get a moment's peace, but that was how it ended up.

"I thought you liked the turtle-duck pond," Mai noted, sprawling across the uncomfortable bench under the open window and leaning her head against the bookcase as Zuko tossed his gold crown on the tidy secretary desk beside her. "Whose office is this anyway?"

"Dunno." Zuko shrugged and plopped down near Mai's feet, working at the hairpiece his crown was mounted on. "Someone in the Ministry of Ceremonies, most likely."

"Hm." Mai sat up and shooed Zuko's fumbling fingers away from his topknot, flicking the clasp that locked the band of crimson enamel and gold in place. Zuko heaved a deep sigh of relief as his hair fell free.

She rested her chin on his shoulder, playing with a lock of his hair. "Hope you brought a comb to put it back up with."

"Hrphmgle," was Zuko's incoherent reply before he turned his head, giving her a light kiss on the lips. Sweet as the gesture was, there was no follow-through. Zuko was distracted, as was becoming the usual for him. At first it had been fun, meeting like this in the precious minutes they could steal from his hectic schedule, ducking into side gardens, hallways, or anonymous rooms such as this office, laughing at their misbehavior, caught up in each others' presence. But someone always found them, something, whether a trifling bit of bureaucratic finagling or a genuine crisis, always took him away… and they never seemed to bridge the distance anymore.

"What's wrong?" Mai asked, trying hard to sound sympathetic and inviting; frustration, she had discovered, did not do much to make Zuko open up to her. Anxious as she was to talk about certain disturbing rumors flying around the Court, Zuko obviously had enough on his mind.

"Minister Loc's been pushing for a decision on my appointment to Chancellor again," Zuko said after pause. "It's pretty clear he's angling for the job, and since he's Minister of the Interior, it makes sense…"

"But?" Mai prompted.

Zuko shrugged, slumping back against the window sill and closing his eyes. "I want Uncle Iroh to be my Chancellor."

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, but only just barely. "Then appoint him your Chancellor. He pretty much is, anyway." Not that the title of "Chancellor" meant anything anymore, not since Ozai stripped the office of its powers when he took the throne.

"Uncle Iroh doesn't want it," Zuko replied, sounding both helpless and annoyed. "He's accepted being called 'High Counselor' only because the traditionalists in the Council insisted that he hold an official title in order to take part in the Cabinet. Now that they've gotten that, they want more of the old ways revived; too many of them remember what it was like in the 'glory days' of Azulon. It's like they're trying to test me, to see how I measure up to Fire Lords past."

"That's stupid," Mai said with vehemence that made Zuko chuckle. Unlike the nobles who seized an opportunity to gain power under Ozai and now faced ruin because of their opportunistic dealings (like her parents, who had paid the ultimate price for their ambition), the conservative faction had seen Ozai as a usurper and resisted his rule.

At first. Lady Ursa had not been the only prominent noble to suddenly and inexplicably vanish during the first year or so of Ozai's reign. It was still an uphill battle to prove to nobles who had lost family in the purges that Zuko was more than a mere usurper of a usurper. Seemingly petty points of order, such as the revival of the title of Chancellor, assumed what Mai saw as ridiculous amounts of importance. "Ridiculous," in that it infuriated her to see Zuko so stymied by a bunch of old men and women when he was trying to do the right thing.

"Hmmm," Zuko sighed drowsily, a breeze puffing strands of hair over his face. The afternoon sun highlighted the darkening smudges under his eyes; he looked exhausted. Mai knew it would be heartless of her to poke him awake just to talk to her for a couple minutes more.

'Might as well go out and see if I can't keep anyone from finding this place for a bit, and leave it until next time,' she thought, still half-tempted to take an inked brush to his face as a warning toward napping during future liaisons. But just as she slid off the bench, Zuko sat bolt-upright, his fingers curling around her wrist.

"I wasn't sleeping!" he exclaimed. "I'm aw-hrfglm!"

"Do you want someone to find us here?" Mai hissed, her hand clamped on his mouth. For once, she was glad that the Palace Guard insisted that all weapons be surrendered to the Captain of the Watch before entering the Inner Palace; people tended to react badly when a gauntlet full of pointy objects was shoved into their peripheral vision.

"Sorry," Zuko muttered as Mai took her hand away. He smiled, his single eyebrow quirked in embarrassment. "I just… didn't want you walking out on me just yet."

"Well, don't fall asleep on me and I wouldn't have to," said Mai, blushing; he had to know what that chastened puppy-grin of his did to her!

"Sit here; that'll make sure that I don't nod off," Zuko said, pulling Mai into his lap just as she resumed her seat beside him.

"It'd better," she replied, pretending to be put-out even as she nudged her head under his chin, twining the fingers of her left hand with his right.

Zuko chuckled, the tenor of his laugh making her heart leap just a little. It was nice to just sit here, she supposed, to simply be together, not talking about troublesome things…

"There was another attempt on my father. Poison in his food again."

Mai groaned to herself, pressing her face against his collarbone and willing Zuko to pick up on her mental command to just be quiet and enjoy the silence for a bit, or at least kiss her if he had to use his lips for something.

No such luck. "Your uncle's investigating the conspiracy, and he'll be making his offical report to me and the Council tomorrow. He's already recommended replacing the senior staff. I don't think the Iron Tower's had such a high turnover rate since the Superintendence Troubles."

'Hrrrrrr…' "That's three times since he's been in there. There's been half a dozen "rescue" attempts. Why can't you just lock him up with Azula on the Boiling Rock?" Mai wanted to know, struggling not to be irked by his skewed priorities. "Even though you and that Water Tribe boy managed to spring some prisoners, no one's even tried to break her out of there; it's still the most secure prison in the Fire Nation."

Zuko's silence was not the reply she wanted this time. "Zuko," she said, looking up at him and tilting his face down to hers with a gentle but firm hand, "you told me yourself you expected stuff like this, so why…?"

"My mother…" Zuko started to say, but stopped when he saw the expression on Mai's face. "I know, I know, it's the one hold he still has on me, and he's never going to give it up, but, I… I don't know. If I can keep an eye on him, keep him close…"

'If Lady Ursa were still alive, she'd have come back long ago.' Of course, Mai never said this aloud, burying it deep lest Zuko see it in her eyes. Any scrap of hope, foolish as it might be, was worth letting him hold onto, in the face of everything else that was wrong in his life, right?

"Any word from Aang about your mother?" she said instead. "He said he'd look for her while looking for Kuei's successor, and Qiang's been the Earth King for almost a year. He must have found something out by now."

"If he did, he hasn't had time to tell me," replied Zuko. "It wasn't enough to put Qiang on the throne, even if Aang is the Avatar. Proving Qiang's birthright, explaining why he was serving in King Bumi's palace guard, stringing together a coalition to support him… he's had his hands full. Between the Dai Li and Fire Nation occupation and the riots afterward, the old ruling class was pretty much wiped out or fled Ba Sing Se; you'd think that would've simplified things, but now Earth King has to draw support from all three circles of the city and beyond in order to rule." He smiled, though the expression was more grim and ironic than good-natured. "Compared to that mess, I've had it easy. Not to mention, I'd rather have Uncle Iroh backing me up than a madman like Bumi."

"… Aang thought Bumi was the best adviser for someone who hasn't even lived in Ba Sing Se until a year ago?" Mai asked, incredulous. Just remembering the old man's cackling, nonsensical exchange with Azula when the former princess had taken charge of the "trade" for her brother made Mai's head hurt. She could almost feel sorry for the young king.

"Yeah, I thought pretty much the same thing," said Zuko, laughing again. "But it makes sense… if you turn your head and squint really hard: Bumi restored order to Omashu pretty quickly, and he knows how to keep potential enemies on their toes. He's the most powerful ruler in the south, and with Toph staying on in Ba Sing Se, Qiang has pretty solid clout with the leaders of southern provinces still in Earth Kingdom hands. "

"That doesn't mean much, not with our colonies cutting Ba Sing Se off from the southern half of the Continent," Mai pointed out, recalling the vague, far-off days of mind-numbing lectures in her history class at the Royal Fire Nation Academy for Girls. "Broken the spine of the Earth Kingdom," wasn't that how Madam Khun had put it? There were days she regretted having been able to cut so many classes because of Azula's ability to coerce "leaves of absence" from their instructors. It was possible she missed the day they had taught "saving the Fire Nation from the screw-ups of the ex-Fire Lord."

"That's how it looks," Zuko agreed. Strange, how happy he seemed that Mai had expressed interest in headache-inducing political dickering. "And I'm not the only one having to put up with governors and the like wanting to break off into little kingdoms. The Earth Kingdom was already fragmented when Sozin started his war, and a century of losing made everything worse. Qiang might just have to accept things as is and rule as a king with some influence over lesser kings. Who knows, maybe the sandbenders'll rise up next and declare the Kingdom of Sand in the Si Wong Desert again."

"'Again'?" Mai echoed. She sometimes forgot the breadth of Zuko's knowledge in historical minutia. Zuko blamed it on the many boring hours he had endured aboard ship during his exile, but Mai suspected it was because he actually liked reading dusty old scrolls written by stuffy scholars who had died eons ago. While Mai was relieved to have distracted Zuko from brooding over his father's assassination attempts and his mother's continued absence, she was not about to let him waste their precious time with pointless trivia.

"It's a strange story; see, a thousand years ago," Zuko was saying, "the tribes of sandbenders in the… um…"

"Please continue," Mai purred whilst nuzzling the side of his neck, lightly kissing the space between his jaw and ear, "I'm not stopping you."

"The… uh…"

'I suppose being dense is part of his charm, or I wouldn't put up with it,' Mai reflected, smirking a bit as Zuko abandoned his dissertation in favor of pulling her up so as to better get at her lips. At some point in their kissing, he transferred her from his lap to the bench, lying nearly on top of her. Mai would have demanded a switch in position, but she never really got the chance. There was a lot to be said for the old adage about absence making the heart fonder, though Mai was certain "heart" was a euphemism for prudish sensibilities.

"Hey, I thought you were the one getting angry with me about making loud noises," Zuko breathed into her ear, smiling against her cheek.

"Well, I wouldn't… Ooo! If you'd stop putting your hand up my…!"

"Please pardon my rudeness, but…"

Had she not been busy cursing every spirit and/or supernatural being she could think of, Mai might have laughed at how Zuko literally jumped off the bench (and her) at the sound of the door opening, only to land on the floor with a decidedly un-regal thud! As it was, all Mai could really do was sit up and give the intruder her best promise-of-death-by-pointy-metal-objects glare while pretending that her robe and hair did not look like she had just taken a tumble out of a linen closet.

The fact that aforementioned intruder was a young woman who gaped at the couple through her glasses as though she had never seen a public display of affection made Mai wish she could summon her gauntlets just by thinking.

"Um…" the young woman began, flushing bright red and hugging a thick stack of bound papers to her chest like it was a protective charm. It was not as though Mai's scowl was even the cause of the other girl's distress, since she had fixated her eyes on some point on the ceiling as if her life depended on it. "I'm… I apologize for my rude interruption, but I heard voices… I was hoping there was someone who could direct me to the office of the High Counselor," she babbled, "since I seem to have gotten the guard's directions turned around, and I truly apologize for interrupting your… um… barging in on you… uh… I'll… findmywaythankyouverymuch,bye…!"

"Wait!" Zuko called out as the young woman backed out of the room, colliding with the doorframe in her haste, the bun perched high on her head like a fraying black onion bobbling precariously. "Uncle… the High Counselor is expecting me, I can help you out, Lady…"

"Murni, of clan Xú, special aide to the Minister of Revenue," she rattled off, still poised to flee into the hallway. Her gaze dropped from the ceiling to Zuko, her eyes widening as she got a good look at his face. "I-I mean, Your Majesty! Please pardon my rudeness!" she corrected, her voice shooting up the scale so high Mai was surprised the glass-fronted document case beside her did not shatter. At least she managed to keep hold of her papers as she bowed.

"Uh, yeah, um… it's okay, Lady Murni," Zuko tried to reassure her, tucking his crown and hairpiece into his robe since it hardly befit the dignity of the Fire Lord to try and fix his hair in front of a panicked junior member of the Treasury. "You can stop bowing now. Please."

"Since you're taking her to Iroh, I guess I'd better just show myself out?" Mai asked as she brushed past him.

"What? Mai…!"

"Lady Mai…?" Murni gasped, righting herself and staring at Mai as she stalked past.

"What of it?" Mai retorted coldly, pausing.

"Oh, i-it's a pleasure to… er, I wish it had been under more auspicious circumstances…" Instead of wilting further under her icy glare, Murni straightened and raised her chin. She had an inch or so on Mai, which was annoying. "My respects to your matriarch," she said with a noblewoman's cultured assurance. 'I have just as much right to be in the Inner Palace as you do,' her golden brown eyes seemed to say as she peered over the black lacquer rim of her glasses.

"Thanks," murmured Mai. 'Got some spine in you after all, do you? I can still tag you to the wall in two seconds.'

'Try – you'll be eating fiery abacus.'

Mai blinked, thrown off for a beat. '"Abacus"…?'

"Mai, you don't have to go just yet," Zuko protested, oblivious to the wordless exchange between the two young women.

"I might as well, since it'll be a hassle running back and forth between here and Iroh's office," Mai demurred, amused at the offended expression that flitted over Murni's face at her casual reference to the "High Counselor." The Xú were just such a clan of tradition-bound bureaucrats that were causing Zuko trouble with their whining, so it gave her a bit of pleasure to repay the favor.

Zuko's propensity for being dense was back in full force. "Well, if that's what you really want to do…" Zuko trailed off, looking resigned.

Mai could almost rip the stack of papers out of Murni's hands and whack him with it. 'Idiot! Just get one of the guards to escort Miss Onion Bun to your uncle's and stay here with me!' Murni, obeying etiquette, was doing her best to effect an expressionless, deaf mask, but Mai could tell she was listening to their spat with rapt interest.

"I'll be seeing you," said Mai, turning her back on Zuko and Murni and walking away before he could spit out a coherent sentence. Thankfully, the hallway turned down another corridor just a few steps away from the office, otherwise it would have been trickier to make a dignified exit. All the same, she could not help but hear Zuko offer an apology for making Murni "uncomfortable." Mai quickened her pace to the point her walk could rightly be called a run, so as not to hear Murni's reply.

For some reason, the young Palace Guardsman on duty at the gate between the Inner and Outer Palace seemed reluctant to hand over her gauntlets and daggers, but Mai chalked it up to him being the usual paranoid bodyguard-types they were. It was not as though she were seriously contemplating charging back there to drive home a point. Or three.

'I didn't even get around to asking him about those stupid rumors,' she thought bitterly, flexing her wrists under the familiar, comforting weight of her gauntlets. Even in late afternoon on a humid summer day, the Outer Palace was like a marketplace, only instead of merchants and farmers peddling trinkets and produce, nobles, ministers, pages, and other assorted bureaucrats were gadding about, rushing off to meetings or just carrying on in ways calculated to make them look extremely busy or important. The usual flurry of whispers and not-quite-discreet-enough glances that greeted her appearance ought not to have bothered her, inured to it as she was by now, but today the hissing pricked at the nape of her neck and Mai moved on as quickly as she could without seeming to hurry. 'At least in marketplaces, most of the people are there to actually do something,' Mai thought. Thank whatever benevolent spirit responsible that people had learned to stop trying to accost her in transparent attempts to curry favor. She hated the deceit, the farce of masks the Court demanded, and she could not wait to get free of the place, now that Zuko no longer needed her.

It was a short palanquin ride back to her parents' mansion, now hers by birthright and majority. 'I've been slacking off on my dagger practice anyway.' If the steward, old Maha, was out, maybe she could even use some of the uglier pieces of china in the butler's pantry for target practice. All she had to do was get clear of the courtyard...

"… of the Sun clan?"

So focused was she on attaining the glorious relief of the outer courtyard, Mai almost body-checked the person who had planted themselves right in the middle of her path. As they were wearing formal Fire Navy dress armor, she would have come out the loser.

"Can I help you?" she asked with toneless deference, looking past the rude idiot's shoulder at the so-close-yet-so-far crimson gate where her palanquin waited. She could feel the stares boring into the back of her head, and hear the chatter; she stamped down on the temptation to whip around and tell them off.

"By any chance, are you well acquainted with Lady Chyou of the same house?"

The mention of her aunt gave Mai pause, enough for her to take a good look at the person standing in front of her.

'Short…' was the first descriptive that came to mind. 'Man or woman?' was the second, since the Navy's dress armor was fashioned in such a way that it was difficult to tell, especially if the wearer happened to be an officer of any consequential rank. 'Lieutenant commander, probably a staff officer,' was Mai's confident assessment; the crimson sash over the right shoulder was a dead give-away. 'A very short, very androgynous lieutenant commander.'

"Pardon my rudeness," the short, androgynous lieutenant commander said (Mai was beginning to hate that phrase), blithely unaware of Mai's inner monologue. The voice, though coarse as if often used for shouting orders across decks in high seas, persuaded Mai that the sailor was, in fact, a woman. The sailor bowed, a brief, economical bend of the waist that spoke of impatience with courtly niceties. "I am Lieutenant Commander Zhì, of the house of Shé."

"Aren't members of your clan more likely to go into the Army?" Mai inquired, after mimicking Zhì's bow.

"Most of them, yes," Zhì replied, the smile that had theretofore graced her sunburned face fading somewhat. "Guess I'm a bit of a rebel."

"Hm," Mai agreed noncommittally.

The smile dropped almost entirely for a moment, but Zhì regained her bearing. "I was told you were Lady Mai of the house of Sun," she continued. "I was hoping you might know Lady Chyou."

"She's my aunt." 'Can we get to the point, already?' There was frustration needing venting, and china needing destroying.

"Really? Great! I mean…" Zhì puffed a bit of air out of her cheek, scattering her long, dark bangs before continuing in a more calm voice, "I'm second mate on the Hui Jian and we're port for… a while. I was hoping you could tell your aunt that I'd like to come by her residence and pay my respects… and condolences."

"'Condolences'?" Mai echoed, not really paying attention. Though the fact that the woman had been at sea for who knew how long might explain why she thought nothing of daring to approach the Fire Lord's girlfriend. Or maybe she knew and just did not care either way.

Zhì raised an eyebrow, no longer smiling. "Your uncle was captain of the first ship I served on, the Da Ji. Captain Ta was my mentor: a good leader, an honorable man. I know it's been a couple years since the North Pole Campaign, but I haven't had the chance until now to pay my respects to the captain's widow." Zhì paused, shifting her weight from one foot to the other before clasping her hands behind her back, looking off to one side. "I know she probably won't appreciate the reminder, but…"

Mai agreed with her; two and a half years had passed since the Ocean Spirit and the Avatar had ended Admiral Zhao's disastrous bid to destroy the Water Tribes once and for all, and her aunt had yet to take off her mourning colors. She could not be certain either way how her aunt would react to a reminder of her husband's death, and it was rather inconsiderate of this woman, this stranger, to expect Mai to clear the way for her. "I'll tell her you want to drop in," Mai allowed, hoping that would be enough to move the woman on her way.

Perhaps she should have been a little more flowery in her dismissal, for Zhì's lips thinned, her posture suddenly tense. "I thank you for your time and consideration in conveying my respects to your aunt, Lady Mai," she said in a cool voice, stepping to one side and executing a stiff, formal bow.

'I don't think she likes me,' Mai assessed, nodding her head and making for the gate without a backward glance. She could not muster up the energy to care. "Home," she told the two palanquin bears as she eased into the glorified wooden box her uncle had given her as a seventeenth birthday present. Stuffy as it was, Mai slammed the screen door shut behind her, slumping back on the silken cushions as the bearers boosted the palanquin's thick pole onto their shoulders and moved off at a smooth, sedate jog toward Mai's mansion. The sound of her two "bodyguards," also "presents" from Uncle Peizhi, flanking either side of the palanquin served only to grate on her nerves. No one of any importance in the capital went about without bodyguards anymore, although the threat of violent uprising had faded months ago. They were yet another facet of the charade, a status symbol for the sake of showing off one's status.

Mai groaned and rubbed her temples, willing herself to forget everything that had happened today. 'Like Zuko even cares that the nobles are trying to marry him off to their daughters,' she thought. 'That's one stupid bit of tradition he's going to stop in its tracks, no matter what.'

But, somehow, her certainty in Zuko's ability to face down his Council was not as steady as it had been that morning…

A/N: Erm, nothing really to say here except… "yay, the plot's arrived"? XD