Chapter X: Barbs so Bright

They walked in flame with barbs so bright,

Their blades outshone the night,

And all who saw, saw only light,

Until death set them right.

Katara wandered aimlessly down the corridors. She told herself she was trying to learn the Palace a little more, trying to make some sense of this place that was still foreign to her. A few days of rest in its halls had not wiped away the image that had built up in her head over the last year, and over her lifetime, of the Fire Nation Palace as a place to be invaded, destroyed, demolished. It was a symbol of everything she'd hated, after all.

Or what she still hated. Katara stepped slowly on lush carpet and took in the vaulted ceilings, the blood-red drapes, the gold-capped staircases and the lovingly wrought statues of Fire Nation soldiers, complete with detailed etchings of their skull-like helmets. She shook her head. How had anyone ever expected a Nation with this level of... well, aggressive nationalism to stay confined to its own borders?

Then she frowned at herself. Only a few days here in the palace, only a month or two here in the Fire Nation itself, but she had learnt something. The Fire Nation was no monolith. There were factions, provinces, families, individuals, who all had their very own unique idea of what should happen next.

Katara chuckled quietly to herself. She ran her fingers along some of the tapestries and took her mind off their subjects and applied it instead to noticing how soft and lovely the material was. Now that she was in the Palace itself, doing what she was doing, she surely counted as one of those individuals. And she had a very clear image of what she wanted to happen next.

"Look girls! It's... oh... Lady Katara."

The words were perfect. So was the tone. It giggled, dripping poison with each curve. Katara turned around slowly, hand balanced lightly on her water flask.

She saw the five Fire Nation girls and felt her heart sink a little. She recognised one or two of them. The one at the head, who had presumably just spoken, was the girl who had stared at her the hardest the night of the Court Dinner. She had a lovely porcelain face, and her fashionably cut silken kimono did little to belie her agile step. Katara narrowed her eyes. If the girl hadn't been trained as a warrior, Katara would down her dirty sparring water.

The others following her were varied. Two were tittering, the way their eyes smiled suggesting they were close sisters. The other two were virtually expressionless, and Katara recognised the Court mask embedded in their features even now. But the way they flanked their friend... if Katara had had hackles, they would have been rising.

The noble who had spoken paused then, so theatrically that Katara choked on her own sly greeting. In any case, whatever she had been about to say fled from her mind when the girl finally opened her mouth once more.

"Or should we say, the famed Avatar's Waterbender?"

Katara couldn't help it. She sputtered. There were words within words in that sentence; questions as well that she wasn't sure she could comprehend. All she knew was that she should be calm, play the game that Mai had tried to teach her, only she couldn't. Memories of the churning discomfort nestled below her stomach were gathering in her gut now. Not that long ago, she had angrily struck out to remember some of herself again. To reforge her identity in a world after war. Now, the way that the girl had said it, that burning flare of derision as if she were Aang's property and not a person... that was enough to send Katara over the edge.

Luckily, she had always been able to do menacing well.

"Excuse me?"

Her voice was not low or deadly or poisoned, the way the other girl's had been. It was loud and outraged and demanding, and the unexpected difference was enough to make one of the tittering nobles flinch back. Katara smiled coldly, but it turned into a scowl when she saw how unfazed the leader was.

"Oh?" One eyebrow tilted to perfection, head inclined in polite disbelief. "You mean to say that you didn't help the Avatar?" She turned to her followers. "I heard that she fought for him, healed him, almost died for him. That she was always by his side in the last days of the war. Sounds like she was the Avatar's waterbender to me."

Katara straightened, her eyes narrowing. "That's ridiculous," she said, as equitably as she could. She was coldly furious now, the pain of the way she and Aang had parted washing over her in alternating tides of grief and shame and anger. "If you use that logic, you might as well call me the Fire Lord's waterbender."

There was a poisoned silence.

And then, a barbed challenge, "Are you?"

Katara almost stopped breathing. She hadn't exactly been thinking when those words had come out of her mouth. She'd been riding the wave of her instincts and anger instead. Now Mai's dry words from a mere hour ago were boiling up from her memories, sending her emotions into a panicked roil. I'm not suggesting you marry Zuko.

With sheer force of will, Katara pushed the thoughts back down to be dealt with later. She was good at denial. And what she needed right now was a clear head to best a group of women trained to survive in their country since they were born on their own ground.

A sudden epiphany hit her. She had beaten Azula by being herself. By using her own powers and her own strength and cunning. Mai's education was useful to the point that she could understand where her opponents were coming from, but there was no way that a few days of information overload could ever hope to make her one with a different Nation's Court. If she was to be judged by those standards, she had already failed, at any rate.

But she was not a member of the Fire Nation, and it was a different world now. She had played a part in shaping it. And water drowned fire, and could dance circles around it too.

Katara put one hand on her cocked hip, the other on her water flask. "I am my own person," she stated, the burn in her heart somehow desperately needing those words to be voiced. And then she smirked. "And as you said, I am Lady Katara."

"Ah, Lady Katara, I was just looking for you."

Everyone froze at the sudden intrusion of the new voice, free of vitriolic inflections and carrying what seemed to only be an undercurrent of faint amusement. Recovering herself, Katara pivoted slowly, staying in control of the situation, the hand on her hip dropping but the one on her flask firmly staying put.

When she saw who the newcomer was, she wasn't sure whether to be glad or to be even more cautious. "Lady Kaeda," she greeted her, head inclining in a small bow.

The Minister for Trade and Economy's wife calmly folded her hands in front of her. "So polite to your elders," she observed, her voice frighteningly devoid of anything. But Katara saw the set to the older woman's face, recognising again the hunger that had flickered so yearningly that night at the Court Dinner. Combined with the sharp slant of her intelligence, Katara decided wariness was in order.

"You were looking for me?" she took her hand off her flask now and deliberately turned her back to the other girls. "How might I assist you?"

Kaeda smiled, her features smoothing over and the faint trace of wrinkles pulling at her lips. "A bit of a private matter, my dear. I would be grateful if you could accompany me to my rooms to discuss it."

She looked over Katara's shoulder then, her eyes widening slightly as if she'd only just noticed the others. "Oh, Akane! I didn't expect to see you here. You do know that your tutor is likely looking for you, don't you?"

"I... yes, Lady Kaeda." Katara turned back just in time to see the girl try to sweep herself up regally. The effect was a little spoiled by the flat stare and the almost pinched look to her face.

Kaeda's smile was peaceable this time, almost placid. "Do send my regards to your mother while you're there. I'm sure Lady Anming is proud that her daughter is trying to apply her studies."

Katara stifled the grin threatening to break out over her face as Akane bowed just long enough to satisfy propriety, and then turned to glide back down the corridor, her coterie following. But the urge to grin died when the last girl to leave, one of the expressionless ones, stopped for a moment. And then, inexplicably, she turned and inclined her head to Katara, low enough to make it an almost-bow.

Surprise and shock froze her mind, but Katara felt her muscles flex in recognition, pulling her into a jerky bow in response. When she had straightened and her thoughts had caught up with her, she saw the Fire Nation girl regarding her calmly.

"My name is Lin," she said. "And for what it's worth, I was there that day at the Agni Kai arena."

She turned to follow her friends before Katara could respond. But she didn't need to, because the next moment Kaeda was at her side, placing a surprisingly warm hand on her elbow. "For what it's worth," she echoed, "I was there as well."

Her eyes were sharp, pin-bright. Her smile was a matching mirror. "And if you are not busy now," she went on smoothly, "My home would be honoured by your presence."

Katara fought the urge to shake herself. She didn't know if she could extricate herself without looking rude, and Kaeda was one of Zuko's Minister's wives. As dangerous as the woman was, her dissatisfaction with her husband, showcased for all who had eyes to see that night of the Court dinner, might prove to be a valuable source of information regarding the pit of viper-snakes Zuko was currently wading in. Besides, she couldn't help but be a little bit curious as to what this noblewoman might want from her.

Katara lifted her chin. "Lead the way."

As they walked, she obliquely studied her companion. Behind that mask, there was a frighteningly self-satisfied look to her. But it was still hungry yet. The overall effect, Katara felt uncomfortably, was like that of a lynx-cat who had just manoeuvred a sparrow-mouse into a corner.

Mai hid her triumph with ease as she glided along by General Sheng's side. It had almost been too easy back there to goad him into revealing more emotion that he should have, while simultaneously displaying her own intelligence and use as well. If she was lucky, both would help her along the path to getting a valuable foothold onto Zuko's most dangerous Minister.

She got a reminder of that when Sheng finally spoke. "Agni's fortune must truly have smiled upon me. I did not expect to have your aid in explaining things to the Fire Lord."

He let the pause draw out, just short enough to let her know she wasn't expected to immediately respond, just long enough to let her know how in control he was and to make the next question sound offhand. "Might I ask how you came to arrive with Lady Katara?"

Mai had already prepared an answer for that on the way to the Palace, and so truth-seasoned lies fell easily enough from her lips. "Since the waterbender's returned, Ty Lee seems to have lost her senses." She let the General make of that what he would, and shrugged. "You know how I put up with her."

Not a direct answer, but Sheng likely hadn't expected one. She waited patiently for him to put two and two together instead. The infirmary was not far away now, only a few more paces, and his eyes gleamed with understanding just as they reached the doors. "Your loyalty is most commendable," he murmured, no trace of sarcasm or even laughter in his voice. He glanced ahead as the nurses parted way for the stretcher-bearers, and then lengthened his stride naturally to talk to the head nurse.

Mai clasped her hands behind her back in the perfect picture of the demure noblewoman as she waited. Head slightly bowed, she knew no one would realise how intently she was listening in. Her eyes flickered as Sheng demanded a private room and half-hourly supervision. She wasn't sure if she was seeing the concerned parent or the paranoid politician, but she was leaning towards the latter.

The room chosen, she followed the procession as they moved to the back of the infirmary. Her eyes darted towards the walls once or twice. The hospital took up a modest section of the southern wing, and many more wards sprouted off from corridors than first met the eye. Like the rest of the Palace, treatment depended on rank, and so she wasn't surprised when they entered a fair-sized room. The bed lay on the far wall, two cushioned chairs placed around it in such a way that the occupants could keep an eye on the door while also tending to their loved one. Mai smiled inwardly. A noble's room indeed.

The men laid Shen Li down without tenderness, with a ruthless efficiency that spoke of practice and training. With that same focus, they covered him with a thin blanket, removed the stretcher, and then left. The instant they did, Sheng moved to fill their space. For a moment, Mai watched as the General hovered over the bed, less like a vulture and more like a hawk over his eggs. And then he straightened.

"Much as I would like to stay, you know I have work to do," he murmured. Mai wasn't quite sure whether he was talking to his unconscious son, her, or both. And then he turned to her. "Lady Mai," he said, both an acknowledgement and a farewell. "I look forwards having dinner with you tomorrow."

Mai dipped her head in reply, not a flicker on her face showing that she'd almost, almost forgotten that arrangement in the excitement. He smiled slightly at that, a hawk's smile, before he turned and left.

As if his departure were some sort of signal, a nurse bustled through the door less than five seconds after he'd gone through. He paused when he saw her standing there, as if surprised, and then bowed, awaiting her orders.

"I will stay until he wakes," Mai murmured, by way of explanation.

The nurse stiffened for a second with surprise, and then continued. "Of-of course, Lady Mai," he stuttered. "In that case, I'll bring two glasses and some water. He'll probably want some when he wakes, and you'll want some while you wait."

Mai nodded her assent and sat down in the chair next to the bed. Moments later, the nurse came with the water and the glasses, checked over Shen Li again, and then left vaguely bewildered after Mai didn't seem inclined to ask any questions about when he was going to wake up. That meant peace for another half hour, then, and Mai used it to good effect. There were many things to think over, many plans to make, and many things to say the next time she saw Zuko and Katara and Ty Lee.

Three more times, the nurse came and went. Mai noted that on every occasion, it was the same one, and narrowed her eyes in suspicion. She was relatively sure that approaching the threshold nervously every time one came to check on a patient was not part of standard procedure. Perhaps she was too paranoid, too finely stretched and tuned, but still...

She was pondering her plan on how to calculatedly nudge the man off balance enough to get some answers the next time he visited when Shen Li woke.

"You," he rasped and Mai couldn't stop herself from blinking. With his voice hoarse from disuse and drug-induced fever, he almost sounded like Zuko. "You... are the last person I would have ever expected to see here."

Mai recollected herself from the shock with grim training and experience. "What do you remember?" she countered, dodging his words and all they insinuated. Or at least, that's what she'd meant to do. He kept staring at her instead, something warring in his expression. That was when she remembered the man in front of her had never shown a predilection for sticking to the rules.

He struggled to rise to his elbow, as if he couldn't bear the power difference in their stances. He managed to get there before she could snap out his stupidity. Eyes now nearly level with hers, he regarded her minutely. She felt the urge to turn away from that scintillation. But that would have been a missed step, a weakness in the dance, and she was not going to lose face in front of him. She stared back instead, and wished oddly for a second that she was dealing with the father and not the son. Manoeuvring Sheng, for all his greater power and possible antagonism, seemed just... easier. Less... involved.

"I remember," he said distinctly, "Liking you. The things you said. The way you moved. The way we moved." His eyes were clear now, almost frighteningly so. "Then I remember you telling me you would abandon me."

He paused. "That hurt."

Mai almost, almost, stopped her jaw from dropping. As it was, she let her mouth hang open just a second before she snapped it back closed. Out of all the sly, indirect, sparring barbs she and Shen Li had ever traded, she'd never expected two words of stark honesty to hit their mark. She felt their impact coil around her control like wires, grasping, and for a moment things seemed to slip.

Then gravity won the battle with his body and he slipped off his palm to land bonelessly on the bed again. And Mai realised his eyes were a little too clear, and closed her own.

She hadn't expected this.

For all her knowledge on Feverflame, she'd never actually seen someone drugged for interrogation purposes. There was a reason it had never been adopted wholesale across the country for law, or inside the political machinations of the Court; doses at that level tended to be deadly to Firebenders. There were no records on what such doses might do to non-benders. She supposed she was looking at one now. One who was still, obviously, at some level affected. Otherwise he had no reason to be acting the way he was, or saying the things he was. None.

Which left her with a rather interesting conundrum.

Mai opened her eyes. He was still looking at her. She swallowed irritably. He was making this harder deliberately, she knew it. Never mind that he clearly still wasn't completely in control of his faculties, which meant it wasn't likely he was able to manipulate anything deliberately at the moment. She just knew he was.

Mai slowly tightened her grip on her robes. "I'm... sorry," she said, carefully, delicately. She let the apology swim out into the air and have as many meanings as he liked. "What I meant was, what do you remember of while you were drugged?"

The guard captain blinked slowly, almost drowsily. She wondered whether he was going to pass out again. She wouldn't be surprised. He was still pale, and even moving as he had must have drained a lot of his energy. He had enough to wet his lips, though, and respond. "Drugged?"

Mai clinically examined her sudden urge to just leave. It was obvious that he wasn't going to be as much use as she'd hoped, and now that he was awake, she was more certain he'd wake again, not slip into a coma forever. Not to mention, a few words in the right ears and she would know anyone who entered the infirmary to 'visit' him.

She looked at him again. His lips were cracked, so badly that she was sure any second now they would start bleeding. She turned her next words into a half-whisper. They came out, unfortunately, sounding more like a plea. "You don't remember anything about being drugged, or people asking you questions about Zuko or Katara or me?"

Shen Li stared at her. Wet his lips again. Blood began to well up through the cracks. "I... was... drugged," he said slowly, as if he was testing out how they sounded on his tongue. He blinked again, his eyelids drooping a little lower this time when he reopened them. "I was... drugged."

It was not pity that she felt, she told herself. Not even a strange sense of helplessness. Mai turned away from that glassy, piercing, haunting gaze, almost fumbling for the pitcher and one of the glasses on the table. When had the nurse put those down again? It seemed like a long time ago.

She poured two glasses, and thrust one out above the air where his hand lay. "Here," she said, the roughness of an emotion she was refusing to identify leaking into her voice before she could stop it.

He blinked again. As if in tandem, she felt her irritation flare again. What did he want her to do? Pour it down his throat?

"Water," she said, unnecessarily, shaking the glass a little.

As if in response, she saw his long fingers flex on the sheets. The movement drew her eyes to them. She remembered how dextrous those fingers were. A warrior's hands. Like hers. But the man lying on the bed in front of her right now seemed less of a hardened Fire Nation warrior-politician at the moment, and more just a man.

Mai didn't jerk when his fingers suddenly reached up to coil around the bottom of the glass. She merely released her hold and sat back. She was in control of this situation, more than she had known she would be when she'd first insinuated herself into it. She sat back, and watched the glass make its slow, trembling journey to his lips. She'd only poured it half full, a qualified test, which he passed when he managed to drink without spilling everything or propping himself up first.

She couldn't watch while he was drinking, though. Mai looked away until the glass was empty, trying to use the moments of reprieve to pinpoint exactly what was wrong with her.

She knew herself well enough to find it a moment later. It had been difficult enough to get used to seeing emotions painted liberally across Katara's face, and they had been at home there. Shen Li and vulnerability, on the other hand... it felt wrong.

Fire Nation politics had always been about relative strengths, relative weaknesses, relative secrets and relative truths. The trust and vulnerability implicit in complete honesty was startling. When those were drug-induced, Mai had the distinct feeling she was taking dishonourable disadvantage of an opponent weakened not by stupidity or poor play.

She wracked her brains. It must be more than that. It didn't seem right that she was thinking like this. Mai had never had many compunctions when it came to matters like these. Her fingers tightened in her robes again. It was him. He was making things difficult, and...

His voice broke into the circle of her thoughts. The clunk of the glass settling on the table sounded a second after. Both dragged her unwilling attention back to him.

The drink had certainly done him some good. His eyes seemed less fervid now, his skin less breakable. It hadn't slaked his exhaustion, though. His words were already slurred with the coming of sleep, or perhaps unconsciousness. She wasn't sure she wanted to know which.

"The... last thing I remember was going home last night," he said. He was fading fast, but he still managed to look faintly discomfited as his eyes began to close. "Or was it... this morning?"

Mai waited until his breathing had evened out, and his eyelids had fully closed to touch the hollows above his cheeks. And then she let out her own breath. She couldn't say she wasn't surprised. There had been reports of Feverflame addicts who took the drug in relatively low quantities experiencing memory loss. Perhaps Shen Li was lucky that more hadn't been wiped clean.

That was the only reason she could find to justify why she was leaning forwards now, her voice low in the quiet of his breathing. He wouldn't remember this. He was asleep, and even if he wasn't, the drug would take care of the rest.

That was the only reason she was doing this. That, and the fact she knew they were utterly, irrevocably, alone.

"I don't trust you," Mai whispered. The words seemed to take on a weight of their own inches over his skin. She stood up, suddenly aware of how close to him she had unconsciously drawn. With the distance, it was somehow easier to say what she wanted to next. "But for what it's worth, I may have lied."

And then, not daring to question herself, not daring to question him, Mai all but fled the infirmary.

Ren and Sha at his back, Zuko tried to calm his breathing as he paced the short distance to the Throne Room. Their weights were different to Shen Li's, it felt more awkward to have their burly presence with him. But he couldn't deny that it was comforting at least to not walk alone. It truly wasn't paranoia if people were out to get you, after all.

The Throne room opened out before him, and he moved through it. Climbed up to the dais he sometimes still couldn't quite believe was his. Of course, nothing else could quite explain why his royal robes felt so heavy or why there was a Crown burning his forehead.

Hiroko, his Court Seneschal, supplicated himself briefly. Zuko nodded once, allowing the man to continue.

"Sergeant Ling will be giving the report, my Lord, accompanied by the rest of his scouts. After that, we have another meeting scheduled to talk about winter supplies and..."

Zuko cut him off, trying not to let the weariness show. "I am aware of my timetable today, Hiroko. Thank you for your time."

Hiroko bowed again, and left, doubtless to review once more his ledgers of all those clamouring for an audience with the Fire Lord, and his task of stretching and bending time. Zuko watched the doors close and wished for them to open again. He wanted news of the rebels. Having to wait as long as he already had was making his palms itch. So much of his future policy depended on knowing what and how great the threat was, including what to do with the refugees. In fact, he was half of the mind to dress the Sergeant down after the report for succumbing to pride and not giving Mai and Katara at least some preliminary information.

The doors opened. A little bit of Zuko relaxed, his knuckles no longer so white on the arms of the throne. A small company of five scouts, their uniforms marking them as just out of the Academy as Shen Li had warned him, proceeded down the aisle. Zuko frowned. There was something a little off about the way they looked. He had never seen newcomers to the Throne Room approach the line of flame with so little trepidation. If they were as fresh and naive and as fanatically dedicated as Mai, Katara and Shen Li had implied, he would have thought he would have at least seen a little nervousness, or some awe.

He didn't have long to ponder on the strangeness, though. They approached with remarkable speed, stopping only a meter away from the curtain of flame. The man in the lead, who Zuko presumed was Sergeant Ling, knelt down then, his face to the floor.

"My Lord."

The five voices simultaneously echoed down the length of the great room. Zuko suppressed a brief shiver, and then got irritated at himself. He could hardly say it was cold, inches from his own flame as he was.

"Sergeant Ling," he said, voice flat as he shoved his emotions away. He could deal with those later. Maybe he was getting too paranoid, too jittery. Maybe it was just because Ren and Sha were not Shen Li and he was getting used to the difference. "Your report?"

It was customary for a formal report for the giver to straighten, still kneeling, and look the monarch in the eye as proof of truth. Zuko blinked as Sergeant Ling changed his kneel into a crouch, and when not one voice, but five spoke in strange and eerie unison.

"There is no peace in this Nation. There is no peace in our world. There are people who do not understand that."

Zuko gave himself one moment as the shock speared him. And then he was on his feet and the poisoned darts flew and the flames roared high.

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A/N - Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed after the last chapter. It's amazing and humbling to know so many are still following this after my atrocious breaks in updating. Thank you again.

Also, apologies for the all-Fire Nation chapter. Despite all my conniving, it just ended up that way and refused to budge when I tried to edit. I promise more Water Tribe and Earth Kingdom action will be seen in the near future.

Thank you all again,

- Shadowhawke