Chapter VII: Some Questions

Some answers, some questions, can lead to quests more,

For destiny's hand can but settle the score

Very distinctly, Aang could remember Sokka's voice on that rocking Fire Nation boat. Only this time, there was no sharp tang of the sea to soothe and distract him from the fuzziness and ache in his head. Instead, there was the cool stone of the palace, the ground that seemed to stabilise him and demand his attention even when he would have much rather flown off into the sky.

Or maybe that was just Toph, her glare for once directed at someone other than him. He half-smiled at the sight, but it sank away as the memory of Sokka's voice came back.

The Earth King decided he wanted to travel the world in disguise, so he set off alone.

... well, not completely alone.

Aang rubbed his aching head. "You know, I didn't think to question it when Sokka told me," he said numbly. "But..."

"You had other things on your mind," Toph interjected ruthlessly. "Like having almost died and waking up a few weeks after on a Fire Nation ship."

Aang acknowledged that with a tired smile, but kept his eyes fixed on Kuei as he continued. "But was it really the best idea to travel the world in disguise when your kingdom had just fallen to the Fire Nation and you'd never been out of Ba Sing Se before?"

The harshness of the words was offset by the mild honesty in which he asked it, and he was too busy rubbing his head and looking at the erstwhile Earth King to see the suddenly approving glances cast his way by his two other companions. Kuei shrank slightly nonetheless, although Aang was heartened to see that his neck didn't seem to collapse into his spine like it once had. "I stayed alive," he said half-defensively. "If I hadn't travelled in disguise, I'm sure that the Fire Nation would have..."

He subsided on this, as if not wanting to contemplate what could have happened. Bosco shivered next to him. The great bear was looking decidedly leaner, and his bulk now seemed more muscle than fat. Iroh absentmindedly scratched his muzzle while his keen eyes never wavered.

"Permit an old general his curiosity, your Highness. But where did you go?"

Mai wanted to go straight to Zuko's office. He was probably in some more meetings discussing the refugee situation and the collapsing economy, but that didn't matter. She would have waited until he returned, because what she had to say was too vital for time to interfere.

She would have, if she hadn't remembered that Sheng was not the Minister for Security for nothing, and that his eyes were everywhere. Their conversation had showed that, at the very least. He'd casually remarked on things that he should not have known, that suggested he'd been watching her and Zuko and Katara and Ty Lee very keenly in the last few days.

Either that, or it suggested Shen Li...

Mai scowled as she paced her room, the stifling atmosphere of her house the only non-suspicious place she could think of to retreat to. The fresh reminder of her vulnerability was galling, and she began to cast her mind over all the mistakes she'd made since she'd been freed. Politically, they were unforgivable.

Well, they were unforgivable if she wanted to pursue the course she was now considering, the one that had gradually unfurled and then picked up speed in front of her blinking eyes in the few hours she'd spent with Sheng listening to the prisoners. That had been illuminating in all the wrong ways. She could see now why they hadn't made any progress in the days since the riots. The so-called 'ringleaders' didn't appear to know a thing.

Which made her suspect something else.

Mai paused as the memory flashed across her mind. There had been one, ah, interview that had been different. It had fallen into the middle of the interrogations, destined to be washed away by the more memorable events of the beginning and the fresher ones at the end had it not been for its oddness. For one, the man had taken one look at General Sheng and his followers and demanded he speak to Mai alone.

For two, after an inscrutable look on his hawklike brows, General Sheng had agreed.

Mai cast a dark glance around her room. Early autumn was already beginning to embrace the Fire Nation, dappling the sunlight with the decaying richness of melting butter. That same sunlight had been shut off to her as she'd approached that particular prisoner warily. Perhaps that was why she was still so unsure as to what exactly had been going on.

"You're the Warden's niece, aren't you?"

Mai kept her eyes impassive. Hers was a relatively prestigious family, so it wasn't surprising that he knew her ties. It really wasn't. Even if Zuko hadn't known... "Yes."

It was a curt answer, but he didn't flinch. Instead, his eyes seemed to light on fire as he gripped the bars that separated them, a stunning change from the hopeless, bedraggled man of moments before. "Then you'll know what I mean when I tell you to check the Prison records!"

She said nothing, waiting for him to go on. He obliged after a moment's scowl. "If you've half the brains and determination of your uncle, you'll know what I mean when I say you should think about friends in high places when you're reading that thing. Get it?"

Mai stared down at him. "Why are you telling me this?" she asked, her voice the monotone of old.

"Friends in high places," he repeated, his eyes gleaming. "That's why they're gone, that's why I'm here."

He looked for a moment like he was about to say something else - a name, another clue to the puzzle, another piece that might tip the winning hand. And yet before he could, the door opened and General Sheng's smooth tones had rolled across the moulding floor.

"Any trouble, my lady?"

Mai's eyes met the prisoner's. "None at all," she said dryly. "None at all."

There was so much trouble.

Mai had slipped back into the Tower, pleading one last question to the guards while insisting that the General stay behind since she wouldn't be taking long. She'd found the Prison records shortly thereafter, and her eyes had scanned them in the ten seconds she'd felt she had.

Friends in high places indeed.

Mai thought about bribery, corruption, and how unstable the Fire Nation currently was, and thinned her lips. She wanted to tell Zuko now.

But the merest glance outside her window was enough to dissuade her of that. It was not her imagination that brought shadows to her eyes, shapes loitering outside her house with casual aplomb. Now that she was looking for them, she could see them, and so it was that Mai clenched her fists and stepped away from the door.

Maybe she could practice her knife-throwing while she waited.

The bard's eyes were wide. "You t-truly mean to give me this much access to information, my Lord?"

Zuko waved his hand dismissively, his eyes already returning to the paperwork in front of him. "I want my people to know the truth," he said tiredly. "As much of it as possible."

He did not raise his head in time to see the sceptical expression of her face, but nevertheless he wasn't surprised to see its shadow when he did. "Yes, I know that the 'truth' is subjective," he said, fighting to keep the annoyance from his voice. Agni, it had been a long day already, and it hadn't even hit eleven yet. "But the Fire Nation has been fed one side of the truth for a little too long. I want you to show the other perspectives, like we agreed. Can you do that?"

She chewed her lip thoughtfully, her eyes never leaving his face. Zuko repressed the flinch that piercing gaze engendered. Somehow, he was sure that she wasn't really seeing him, just his scar, and that made him more than uncomfortable, it made him wonder whether he had gotten the right person for the job at all...

Finally, she nodded sharply and stepped back. "I will do my best, my Lord," she said. He saw an odd glint of determination on her face, and for the first time, prayed that everything would be enough. He and Ty Lee had worked together to find the right person for this - one hopefully more neutral than most of the court troubadours so as not to be accused of bias, and yet also sympathetic enough to their cause that the play might actually have an impact on his people. It was a difficult balance, and that was why he had demanded to read the script and view the actors.

The script that was almost halfway completed, and the actors who were just going through the final auditions now.

Zuko breathed. "That is all I can ask you," he said, and she bowed and left the lingering ghost of her piercing eyes behind her.

They haunted him for a while as he bent over his work, but it wasn't long before he was so engrossed in the matters before him that he forgot about them. Food was getting more scarce, for one. With the influx of rural refugees, there was no one left to tend to destroyed crops. Winter was still a few months ahead, but summer was dying already and they had to capitalise on the time they had left, otherwise he'd be left with a starving, poverty-stricken Nation.

He was not so engrossed, however, that he didn't hear the quiet sequence of knocks only one man knew. With a relieved smile, Zuko looked up. "Come in."

Shen Li slipped quietly into the room, locking the door behind him. "How goes it, my Lord?"

"Zuko," Zuko corrected him almost absentmindedly, even though a part of him wondered what he'd done to earn the formality all over again. He'd thought they were past this already. "And it's not going well. I've been looking at the statistics and food projections again, as well as the numbers of refugees flowing in and the capacity of the city. And while I understand where he's coming from, do you have any idea why your father is pressing me over...?"

The question died in his throat as he finally caught the look on Shen Li's face. And then Zuko cursed all the gods he knew for his own stupidity.

Mai was not getting bored.

She was getting aggravated. She paced the corridors of her home and stared, unseeing, at the rich draperies and artwork that adorned the walls. She ordered a fruit tart or two, but after they'd vanished, there was no further entertainment there either. So when one of the servants approached her and reported that Katara was on her doorstep, she was not happy, she was relieved to be free of the stifling company of her own thoughts.

Mai glided down the stairway to meet her... friend. The waterbender smiled up at her hesitantly.

"I'm sorry for cancelling on you so suddenly this morning," she said as they reached the same level. "Kama said she was going to teach me healing, and then I..."

Mai shrugged away the rest of the explanation. "Actually, it worked out for the better," she rasped. "You would never guess who joined my rounds of the Prison."

Her voice was heavy with sarcasm, until she realised from the questioning silence that Katara really wasn't able to guess and she lifted her eyes skyward. If the waterbender was going to become a political player, she still had a long way to go.

"General Sheng, Minister for Security... Shen Li's father," she listed off the titles one after the other until Katara nodded in recognition, ignoring her own pause before she said the last one.

The other girl looked at her, her face a question mark. "What did he want?"

Mai briefly explained everything. That he knew what she'd been there for. That he'd seamlessly coerced her into accompanying him. She relayed a few of the odd comments, especially his uncommon interest in her, and then the crowning one, the one inviting her to dine with his family.

It had been said in all the right ways, the right formality with which to invite a highly ranked noble lady to a meal. But he'd called her 'a daughter of her House', and the way in which he'd worded it was customary to inviting an unattached noble female into a family who had a son with prospects.

Mai was not so patiently explaining the subtleties of the wording when Katara interrupted. "So you think this is something to do with Shen Li?"

Mai inaudibly ground her teeth. "It had better not be," she said, and although the other girl didn't know her well enough to understand the way that flat viciousness melded into her voice, Katara knew enough to draw back slightly. "If he's been betraying Zuko and his father's in on the act..."

"What if it's there's another reason for this?" Katara interrupted again. "I mean, you said that Sheng seemed really interested in you. If he knows that you were close to both Azula and Zuko, but now you're your own woman, maybe he wants to recruit you. Or even make a match."

"But that's not all," Mai suddenly wanted to move on very, very quickly from this part of her story. I'll deal with that horrible thought later. "Do you remember that prisoner I told you about? The one who kept going on about friends in high places?"

Not even waiting for her nod, Mai continued. "Well, I did manage to check the Prison records without that old hawk looking over my shoulder, and he was right. A lot of the prisoners that were caught from the riots have already been released."

Katara's eyes widened. "By who?"

"I don't know, but I'm certain from what that prisoner told me that every name on that scroll can be traced back to the people in Court," Mai said disgustedly. "And that means that some of them are sponsoring, or at least supporting these riots. It doesn't make sense otherwise, because if they were released because they knew nothing, then some of those idiots I was talking to today should have been released days ago."

"What did Zuko say about this?"

Mai paused for a moment, and perhaps the waterbender was quicker than she gave her credit, because her eyes were narrowed and the next question was on her lips before she could answer.

"Why haven't you told Zuko yet?" Katara asked.

Despite the narrowed eyes, the query wasn't accusatory. Mai prevented herself from flushing anyway. It was good practice. "Sheng's people are outside, watching," she explained, gesturing sharply to the walls outside, the ones that caged her in. "What do you reckon they would think if I rushed off immediately to talk to Zuko?"

Katara frowned as that sunk in. "But surely they already know you're working with Zuko. Isn't that natural? Why else would you let me in? Heck, why else would you have been investigating the prisoners in the first place? Didn't you say that Sheng knew what you were doing and that I would be coming along?"

Mai shook her head, but her thoughts were racing. "I never told anyone what I was doing, just that I wanted to talk to some of the people captured in the riots. I could have just been another bored noblewoman. He had to have known from somewhere, which means he's watching us. Or someone's feeding him information"

Katara raised her eyebrow incredulously, focusing on what Mai irately thought was the least important part of what she'd just said. "You mean visiting the Prison is what 'bored noblewomen' do for fun around here?"

Mai quelled her huff of impatience. "Not exactly. Many know, or know of, some of the people in there. They're not all guilty - some of them are being held pending proof of it. It's not uncommon for people to visit the Prison, but it is noted who people visit."

Katara shrugged. "Well then, maybe we need to think of a new hobby for some of the nobles here, because I'm not sure if you noticed, but an awful lot of the girls were wasting their time glaring at me last night."

Mai in fact had noticed. She'd dismissed it at the time, because she'd been the recipient of many of those glares herself the last time she'd been back in the Capitol. She'd gotten so used to them that they were just another fact of her day, like Agni rising in the east.

But now that Katara mentioned it...

Mai did not push away the thoughts of General Sheng and his son. But she did relegate them slightly to the left as Katara's casually-tossed words hit her with their full impact.

And then, for one of the first times that she could remember, Mai felt a strange, soundless urge deep in her chest. It rose up through her throat, and when it came up, it could not be called a laugh, but it was something so close to it that one of the maidservants cleaning nearby almost broke a priceless vase in her shock.

When she finally got control of her voice back, Mai's lips curved.

"Just what we need," she said. "A distraction."

Iroh wasn't sure whether to laugh or to stare.

Kuei had just finished telling them eagerly of the experiences he and Bosco had had, fleeing deep into the numerous mountains of the Earth Kingdom amidst the handful of those lucky enough to have escaped Ba Sing Se. Not to mention, with a few pointed questions the King had revealed himself as a scholar of academic texts, including political studies. It was surprising, given how inept he seemed to be, but Iroh was quietly amused at the thought of a political academic actually in a position of power. One's knowledge might span the seas, but without true understanding it was just a collection of water.

Even more intriguing, however, was the revelation that Kuei had been sheltered by Earth Sages. Iroh had not believed that some still existed, but when the Earth King had started rattling off the 'amazing collection of texts' that they had had, he was forced to reluctantly open his mind to the possibility of it.

Which did indeed pose a problem. Unlike the Fire Sags, who had been cowed into accepting Fire Lord rule and thus survived, the Earth Sages had been sought out and eliminated early on in the first quarter of the hundred year war. Or at least, that's what he'd thought.

"So what are these Earth Sage guys like?" the strident tones of young Toph cut through his thoughts, and Iroh quirked his brow in shared curiosity. Kuei's eyes lit up.

"Oh, they're wonderful! Just like the old books said they were - defensive earthbending only and completely loyal to the Avatar!"

The way Kuei's face shone suggested to Iroh that he'd missed Aang's wince. The old general shook his head. If he hadn't known better, he might have wondered how this man could have ruled Ba Sing Se for the last two decades. As it was, he knew that whoever had held the reins, it certainly hadn't been Kuei. "And their studies! I managed to read half their scrolls at least on the way back here, they decided to bring some back to slowly refill the old University libraries again."

Lost in his thoughts, it took Iroh a moment for comprehension to dawn. "Wait," he said sharply. "Are you saying that the Earth Sages have come back with you, your Majesty?"

"Why of course!" Kuei said happily. "Once I let them know who I was and when news reached us that the war was over, of course they wanted to return to Ba Sing Se!"

Aang swallowed. "Where are they now?" he asked, half-timidly. But Toph's sightless gaze was already swivelling to the door.

"Someone's right outside," she reported. And then her eyes widened, and she jerked to her feet. "And they're gonna... get down!"

There was the tearing shriek of stone as the little girl, the greatest Earthbender in the world, bent a rock tent around them. And then there was nothing but the howl of fire and the boom of an explosion strong enough to shatter rock.

-

-

-

-

A/N - Sorry for the messiness of this chapter, but I really wanted to get something up in time for a fortnightly deadline to prove I wasn't dead. Hopefully the updates will come easier to me soon.

More importantly, thanks so much for all of your wonderful words and taking the time to review and let me know your thoughts after these long months of hiatus. I don't think I could ask for more amazing readers.

-Shadowhawke