Chapter 14
Mai watched as Jet flashed the seal before the bandit's eyes. Tiandu must have given it to him to get into the compound in Ba Sing Se. Tiandu didn't hand out the seal lightly, so he must have felt confident that Jet was trustworthy.
But now Jet had shown it to a group of common bandits—bandits who could kill them, take the seal and use it to get in to any Fire Nation complex in the Earth Kingdom.
The minute she got her chance, she would destroy that seal so it could not be used by these criminals to target her household or her family's. Then she would beat Jet to death for showing it so casually.
The bandit leader held out his hand, but Jet quickly stowed the seal in his vest pocket again. Mai relaxed her grip on her knife. Apparently Jet knew what he had. She was glad to see that he kept it moving fast enough that the bandit couldn't read the coded inscription. At least he hadn't seen it well enough to counterfeit it.
"Give it here," the leader demanded, his hand still outstretched.
"Not a chance," Jet replied. "And before you think of just killing me and taking it for yourselves, you need to know one thing. This seal is keyed to a particular workman's shop. You'll have to identify the shop correctly to get in with your wagon load of 'workmen' here. If you kill me, you'll never know which shop to name."
The leader then looked at Mai. "And don't even think about asking her," Jet interjected with a laugh. "She doesn't know anything about the rest of the job. That's part of what keeps us and her safe—if you know what I mean. All she's got to do is forget to lock a door one night, then slip out to meet me two days later so we can make our escape to Whaletail Island—loaded down with treasure—right, sugar?" he asked, planting another kiss on her cheek, while simultaneously giving her shoulders a companionable squeeze.
"So, whaddya think?" Jet asked casually. "Have we got a deal or have we got a deal? Split 50/50—my gang/your gang?"
"Just how many is in your gang?" the bandit asked, doing quick calculations in his head.
"Okay, okay," Jet backed down, "I was going to go 60/40 with Gan. I'll do the same for you."
The bandit looked back at another man who stood further back, a small man with a black eyepatch over one eye. The man gave a little nod. There's the real leader, Jet surmised. Good information to have. "Deal," the big man said, finally holding out his hand to shake Jet's. "The name's Li."
"Funny how I keep running into Li's," Jet said under his breath as he gave Mai another little squeeze around the shoulders.
Aang opened his eyes in the spirit world, aware that he was standing in the middle of a garden.
"Avatar!" a rich woman's voice called to him sweetly. He turned to see a beautiful woman sitting on a soft hillock of grass, Zuko lying next to her, his head in her lap. She stroked his hair absently with her green fingers. "Zuko, darling, we have company," she murmured musically into his ear. He shifted a little, but didn't wake. "Avatar, please, come join us. I apologize for our Prince Zuko. He's been a bit under the weather lately. I don't want to disturb him."
Aang stepped forward to sit on a nearby moss-covered log. The moss felt like silk beneath his hand. "Nice place you have here, Lady Lian Shen," he said, glancing about. Zuko appeared to be fine, if sleepy.
"Yes, it is, isn't it?" she replied, casting about a glance of her own. "It could use a little more color though, now that we have special company." She waved her hand idly, and a myriad of tiny flowers began to bloom colorfully in the grass around them. Large, exotic vines began to drape themselves from the trees, unfurling spectacular flowers whose scents made Aang's head begin to swim.
"Isn't that better?" she asked, her melodious voice wrapping around him like strands of soft candy.
"Yes," he heard himself answer, aware that he was slipping into some kind of altered state. Was it the flowers? Was it her voice? Was it her beautiful tawny eyes, the color of a rich sunset? Was it the deep red of her hair, like strands of spun copper? Was it the exotic shade of her skin, the color of new leaves on a spring morning? Aang gradually became aware that he was drooling just a little.
He shook himself back into the clarity of the avatar state. "My Lady Lian Shen," he began in a chastening voice, "shame on you. Working your wiles on the avatar himself!"
She laughed with a sound of tinkling bells. "I had to try, Avatar Aang," she replied. "You'd be such a wonderful addition to my garden, you know. Just like this beautiful prince. I wish I'd never let his uncle leave so many many years ago," she sighed. "But these poor humans are so fragile. I can't keep them forever you know."
"No indeed," Aang said seriously. "The longer they stay, the more disturbed they become, isn't that right?"
"Yes, sadly enough," she said petulantly. "That's why my lovely princeling is asleep. Besides, when he's awake, he just asks to go home. It does get a bit annoying." Then she stroked his face, running her delicate fingertip across his eyebrows, down his cheek to his mouth and across his lips.
"But he's such a treat, I hate to let him go," she complained. "It gets so lonely here sometimes. There's nobody around but the mountain spirit and he's become such a bore over the past thousand years." Lian Shen looked up at Aang pitifully. "I just want company, you know."
"I know, my lady," Aang replied sympathetically. "But humans aren't good company, are they? They lose their minds if they're awake and they're no fun if they're asleep."
"They're a little fun when they're asleep," Lian Shen said in a teasing voice. "I can listen to his dreams. This one has been dreaming a great deal about his mother. It's so sweet but so sad." She ran her fingers through Zuko's hair, half closing her eyes in concentration.
Then she looked back up at Aang brightly. "I like to listen in on human dreams. They're so revealing. I can even make their dreams more interesting, more dramatic."
Aang gave her a reproachful look. "Don't go manipulating our dreams just to listen in on our troubles," he said sternly. "That's not very polite."
"Oh, all right, Avatar Aang," she conceded. "If you say so." Then she sighed again. "I suppose I'll have to let this one go now, won't I?"
"I think that's a good idea," Aang said, relieved that things were going so well.
Then she darted a hard look at him. "But if I keep him with me, that awful Toph girl will work harder to find a king for Omashu to get him back again."
"It's not ladylike to hold hostages," Aang reminded her. "Besides, Toph takes her job very seriously. She will find you a suitable king—one who listens to the voice of the earth, one who understands neutral jing, one who thinks before acting. She'll find the swamp a good protector."
Then Aang stood and gestured toward Zuko.
She sighed and spoke softly in Zuko's ear. He stirred and sat up then stood, looking around in confusion. She reached up one delicate hand, and he automatically helped her to her feet.
"Give us a kiss, darling," she commanded easily, putting her arms around his neck, "then you must be on your way—back to the mundane world below."
Zuko blinked a few times as if to clear his head, then leaned in to kiss her cheek. Lian Shen turned her head so the kiss fell on her lips instead. "Go home, Prince Zuko," she sighed, stroking his cheek one last time. Then with another slight wave of her hand, he was gone.
She shot a dark look at Aang. "Avatar, you are no fun at all anymore," she snapped. "I liked your past lives much better—you were less preachy."
Aang gave her a beatific smile and polite bow. "Well, my lady, I have one more piece of advice for you. I believe you should get out more. Go visit someone other than the mountain spirit. The moon spirit is a very sweet girl. You should get to know her," he suggested. "You've spent a little too much time in neutral jing yourself. You should do like Jet—take action."
"Jet?" the spirit asked curiously. "The young man with all those terrible dreams about battle and death?"
Aang reprimanded himself strongly for mentioning his name. The last thing Jet needed was to fall into the spirit world to be entertainment for Lian Shen.
"Yes, but he's out of the swamp by now, my lady," Aang tried to deter her from pursuing the topic.
She half closed her eyes again. "No, he's still in the swamp with that Mai girl," she began. "There are several others from the outside there as well. How interesting. I'll have to listen to that young man more closely while he's here."
"You say there are others with him?" Aang asked, suddenly concerned. "Who are they? Can you tell anything about them?"
Lian Shen listened carefully. "This isn't easy, avatar. Thoughts are much harder to hear than dreams, you know," she replied after a moment. "But the others don't seem very nice. I think they plan to do harm to our Jet."
"You might want to--" she began, but when she looked up Aang was already gone. "How rude!" she exclaimed. Then she sat down again with a sigh. "I hope the next avatar learns better manners."
Jet had realized just moments before that his cleverly laid plan was rapidly going awry. He was so proud of the way he'd managed to con the group into accepting them rather than killing them, only to find that one of the gang members had a cousin in the residential guard—a cousin who might accept a bribe to determine the code on a certain pass seal. A code which didn't even exist until he made it up.
Now, he found himself surrounded by armed men, bows at the ready. "Come on, guys," Jet began placatingly. "That's not the way to treat a partner."
"Maybe we don't need a partner," Li replied roughly. "All we need is that seal and your pretty girlfriend."
"I won't help you if you hurt him," Mai stated firmly. "And you'll never get into the apartments without me."
"You'll help us, hot stuff," Li sneered. "Isn't that what he calls you? By the time we're done with you, you'll be begging to help us."
Jet felt sick to his stomach. There had to be a way out of this. He absolutely couldn't let Mai fall into their hands. But how in the world was he going to get close enough to any of them to grab a weapon without becoming a pincushion first?
Mai stepped in front of Jet, shielding him with her body. He heard a muffled click. "I can't help you if you kill me, now can I?" she asked coolly as she slowly backed them toward a nearby tree.
Good, Jet thought, get us closer to some cover. Unfortunately, the bandits knew exactly what she was doing. "Stop right there, missie," Li said. "Not another step."
"Fine," she answered calmly. "I can take it from here."
A snap of her wrists sent a dozen razor sharp blades slicing through the air toward their intended targets. She didn't have a clear shot on all of them, so only about eight managed to hit any part of the men standing around them. However, just as she'd hoped, the surprise of the attack itself was enough to break up the ring of archers.
They were poorly trained, Mai thought. Only three even managed to release their arrows and all three went far wide of the mark—one even hitting one of their own men across the clearing, burying itself in his thigh and taking him down out of the fight to roll on the ground in agony.
Of her spring-fired blades, five had caused enough damage to send the bandits to the ground, leaving the rest running about a bit aimlessly. She targeted the small man with the eye patch, the apparent true leader of the group.
He stood his ground, sighting her with an arrow. Without hesitation, she sent a small dagger flying through the air to pierce his shoulder. She was out of practice, she thought grimly. She'd been aiming for his heart.
Li, on the other hand, ran for cover, dropping his bow as he went. At her side, Jet had already leaped into action, springing to tackle one of the running men, knocking him senseless with a hard punch to the jaw and taking the sword from his belt. A single leap then brought Jet to Li's hiding place where he dropped the cowering man with a single blow of the sword hilt. Interesting that he hadn't just run him through, Mai thought.
She turned her attention to the other men, hurling an assortment of small daggers at them and pinning them in various legs and arms, sending them to the ground wounded, but not mortally so.
A few minutes later, the group of bandits lay groaning in a heap, Jet's dark sword tip at their chins having been enough to make them crawl unarmed into a pile. Out of the group, the only one that worried Mai was the leader, who fixed them with a malevolent stare. Li was just a thug; this man was a murderer. She could see it in his eye.
Jet apparently could see it as well. "We've got no quarrel with you," he said firmly to the small man. "I don't even know your name and you don't know mine. Let's let bygones be bygones. You'll all heal and we'll just forget this ever happened, okay?"
The man only stared at him coldly. Jet turned and took a step toward where Mai stood with the treegeckos. Then the man said something under his breath, something only Jet could hear, something that made Jet's face turn hard and cold.
With a speed that surprised her, Jet leaped at the man, pinning him to the ground with a knee to the chest. Then the young mercenary addressed the man in a harsh whisper, his dagger's bright silver point just piercing into the soft flesh below the man's ear. A bright trail of blood ran down his neck and onto the ground.
Then Jet pushed himself away from the man and walked away from him without a backwards look. Mai could tell that the small man was afraid as he coughed and wiped the blood from his neck with a shaking hand.
Jet walked back to the treegeckos, pausing long enough to wipe his blade before resheathing it with a cold hiss of metal. She started to ask him what the man had said, but something about the look in Jet's eye gave her pause.
"Let's get out of here," he said savagely as they mounted their geckos and headed away from the bandit camp at top speed.
Back in the village Aang practically roared in frustration. What good was it to be the avatar and have access to the avatar state when it wouldn't lead him to a single lost couple in a swamp? Just as he'd done with Toph and Zuko, he knelt and searched for any sign of the lost pair with no success.
Finally he resorted to going back to Lian Shen.
"They're fine," she assured him. "In fact, they're on their way back to you now."
"So they decided to come back to the village?" Aang asked.
"Yes, they're on their way back to the village," Lian Shen assured him. If something in her tone of voice didn't sit well with him, there was little he could do about it.
In the end, he had to content himself with returning to the human world to check on Zuko.
"How's he doing?" Aang asked as he entered the healer's hut.
"Terrible," came Zuko's hoarse answer. "I feel like I've been run over by angry komodorhinos."
Toph's wide smile let Aang know that he was doing much better.
Aang and Katara left the hut after a few minutes to let Zuko continue to rest. "How is he really?" Aang asked.
"Well," Katara began slowly, "he's definitely on the mend, I'd say, but he's still very weak. The toxins have to finish metabolizing in his system. He needs lots of rest and plenty of fluids for the next several days according to Dei Zi. If he pushes too hard, too fast, he'll just end up in the same shape he was in last night."
"So that means we're stuck here a while longer," Aang surmised grimly.
Katara looked at him sorrowfully. "It seems that way," she sighed.
"Maybe the nights won't be as bad. I had a little talk with Lian Shen. She admitted to helping our dreams along for dramatic effect," he said, putting one arm around her soft shoulders as they walked together.
"She's terrible, isn't she?" Katara said, an edge to her voice.
"Not really," Aang replied. "I think she's mostly bored. I told her to go visit Yue."
"I never thought of spirits having the same kinds of troubles we have," Katara sighed.
"You want to see trouble, go visit the face stealer," Aang said, then shivered. "On second thought, forget I even mentioned him."
Then he stopped for a moment and pulled Katara close to him. He'd loved her for so long—from the moment he laid eyes on her. He didn't know what he'd do without her. She was the solid ground beneath his feet, the peaceful flow of his life that kept him connected when things got strange—like today. Today had been strange.
As he just enjoyed the feel of her against him, he felt heartily sorry for those who didn't have someone to lean on, someone to share the load with. It was his earnest prayer that everyone on the earth find companionship—and love.
Miles away, Jet and Mai rode off in silence, heading back down the stream, but somehow everything had changed on them. Though they rode for hours more, they never reached the edge of the swamp. After a while, Jet knew it was hopeless. They'd been pulled back into its grip. It wanted them, now it had them.
The air grew dark and heavy around them as sun began to set. Strange calls echoed through the night, startling the geckos and making them hard to handle. Mai's grew so skittish after a while that he became afraid it would run off with her. So he stopped and wordlessly relieved it of its pack and saddle, settling Mai into the harness behind him.
Within moments, a low roaring/growling came from a branch overhead and the gecko jerked its reins free of Jet's grip and dashed panicking into the undergrowth, crawling in, over, and around obstacles until it disappeared from sight. The remaining gecko pulled against the reins in fright and it took all Jet's strength to hold it. He talked soothingly to it and finally the animal calmed again.
Jet became aware that Mai was holding around his waist tightly. He patted her hands and talked soothingly to her as well until her grip loosened a little and she rested her cheek against his back.
They continued to ride, aimlessly in Jet's opinion. What was the use of riding at all, he wondered? They'd never get out of that miserable place. It had them right where it wanted them. Alone and helpless in the dark. Bandits at their backs and wild animals around them.
Soon, they rode up on the disemboweled carcass of the other treegecko, its blood splattering the tree trunks around it. Scavengers in the darkness snuffled around, waiting for their turn at the feast. Their gecko scented the air and stepped nervously as they gave the carcass a wide berth. Mai turned her head away from the sight. So did Jet.
At long last, they spotted a dim glow ahead of them. The firepit burned low as they approached the village. Jet's heart sank. All that distance, all that time, all that trouble—to go nowhere. To end up right back where they started.
Silently, he helped Mai off the treegecko, unloaded their belongings, unstrapped the saddle, and put the gecko back in its paddock with fresh food and water. He patted it and spoke to it soothingly again.
Then he took Mai by the hand and walked back into the guest hut where their cots were still laid out just as they'd left them. Aang and Katara slept quietly to one side.
He unbuckled his swordbelt, placed his sword and dagger on the floor beside the bed, and pulled Mai into his arms. Then he lay down on the cot, still holding her close against him.
She lay there half on top of him, half next to him in the darkness. He spoke soothingly to her and stroked her hair as she quietly cried herself to sleep in his arms. After a long while, he too fell asleep, and for the first night slept without dreaming.