Mai glides around the palace with her ears open. She still makes her usual snide remarks, but somehow they transform into suggestions, and after a while she is all but making her own appointments of ministers, advisers, wardrobe attendants. It's not that she particularly cares, but she can't help noticing what needs to happen, people who need to be promoted or removed.
Sometimes she'll string along a treacherous courtier for months only to exile him or reapportion his family lands to someone more loyal. It's a game to her, like her knives. She can't help her skills of observation and analysis.
No one else will do it, and she has nothing else to do.
Zuko finds himself breathing in the palace again, beginning to suspect that he might live another day, another week, another year.
It's more than he ever expected.