...
The docks of Ba Sing Se were both spectacular and depressing. Past the Kuang River's turbulent reformation over a hundred long stone piers jutted out into the muddy brown water. The piers' stone was stained green with centuries of moisture and worn down by the passage of endless generations. Out at the end of one of the jetties, two government earth benders in dark green robes executed precise arm motions as they summoned their inner qi energy. In answer to their spell a huge mound of sodden earth levitated up from the water of the ship berth, floating into the air before collapsing down into a waiting barge. Magic served at the will of the King and commerce, just like everyone else in the city.
Beside the riverside forest of ship masts and smokestacks, the grand stone facades of merchant warehouses loomed, hoary and weathered from their neglect during the great war. For decades, enemy warships had choked the river mouth with a blockade and, bereft of trade, Kuang Harbor had begun to wither away. However, in the end the war had died first. Today the silver blood of prosperity flowed once more but the ancient trust in the river was dead. These people knew where the silver now came from.
Among the chaotic wooden press of rib-sailed junks and paddle steamers, tall foreign ships loomed like fortresses with black metal hulls. Twenty years had passed since the war ended and those would-be conquerors came as merchants instead but the City had not forgotten. However, that old grudge was not going to stop anyone from making a profit.
Along the waterfront, Ayika crossed bridge after bridge over more canals that seemed more full of boats than water. On the street, hawkers called out to sell their latest Fire Nation fashions, businessmen argued to buy Fire Nation machines, and painted signs proudly proclaimed that their store carried Fire Nation glassware. These days there was hardly a major business in this city that didn't sell the foreigners' products or owe them money. This raised questions about nature of national pride but right now Ayika mostly focused on not being trampled by the bustling crowds.
As she passed a rare empty ship berth, Ayika looked out down the river to see her father's little pilot boat guiding a wallowing trading junk out towards the bay and the sea beyond. She could just make out the pilot captain with his ridiculous green hat but at this distance her father was only a slightly darker-skinned blotch amongst the other sun-tanned backs pulling on the oars or the ropes to the sails.
A few minutes later, past endless lines of porters and around a dark pool of something highly suspect, Ayika arrived at a familiar berth. Here beside a steamship a group of longshoremen were pulling mightily at a thick rope to free it from a tangled pile of wooden crates. The crates creaked in protestation.
One man in a conical straw hat stood off to the side screaming at them.
"Pull, you useless clods!" he yelled. "Li, if I ever find what motherless idiot taught you your knots I'm going to do my own practice with his gizzard!" His words were strong and clear despite the scar that curled under his lower lip. The dockworkers gave another effort at pulling the rope with the looks of those embarked on a clearly doomed enterprise.
The foreman continued to yell, "If we have to cut that line I'm going to have you scum splicing till the moon sets! See that I... And where under the sky are you going?!"
The tallest of the workers, a young man built like a bull in a shirtless vest, had left the group and was staring in a distant manner at the pile. Oblivious to the curses of his foreman he now began to climb up onto the boxes themselves. For a moment he just stood frozen on the top, a broad shouldered silhouette against the hazy sky as he looked down at the tangled ropes and crates, but then that instant snapped and he called down to the other men.
"I think I've got this figured, pass the line up to me!"
As the other longshoremen gathered up their twined adversary, this young man leaned down and shielded his eyes against the sun to peer down into a crack between the crates.
"Get down off there!" his supervisor yelled as the young man stood again, taking the problem rope in one hand. "You're just going to... At least wait until you got help up there! Sun, Lasu, get scrambling!"
"No, it's ok." The young man shifted his grip on the hempen line while standing on top of the crate pile. That rope was as thick as Ayika's arm but he handled it in his off hand without a hint of effort. "We were just going at it from the wrong angle." With that, he set his feet against the planks of the top crates and began to pull. His muscles bulged beneath his short laborer's vest and his face grew red with effort. His fellow workers moved to help but before they could get to him the young man gave a slight stumble and the rope anticlimactically slackened as it came free.
The workers turned at the sound of clapping to see Ayika leaning against a bollard-post next to the harbor street. She got nods of recognition from many of the workers as she walked in towards the scene of the battle holding the Bao brothers' lunch package. They were all used to seeing Ayika up here on the docks. The problem of the tangled crates resolved, longshoreman got about their business of unloading the ship. Well, most of them did.
"Hey, Xiaobao!" one called out, and gestured over at Ayika. "How do I sign up for that delivery service? You can keep the lunch but you best be sharing those clams!" He then laughed at his own racy joke.
Maolin 'Xiaobao' Bao, the tall young man who had just jumped down from on top the stubborn pile of cargo, turned red and started to sputter something. However, Ayika was quicker and yelled back over her shoulder:
"That you, Chouyu? I thought you were still in the market lockup for trying to feed your oyster to the sheep!"
The man's answering laugh just made Xiaobao darken another shade. Chouyu slapped his knee and called back, "That's a good wharf rat! Hey, tell your pop I'm still looking to deck with him some night!"
With that he climbed back up the ramp and vanished over the gunwale of the ship.
Xiaobao smiled ruefully as Ayika passed him the lunch package, only craning her neck a little to look up at him. He quite rudely persisted in being much taller than her. "You know," Xiaobao said. "I'd say something to them about talking like that... But, well, you get how it is with-"
"Just take your food, moron," Ayika replied with a grin. Old Chouyu was hardly the worst she'd hear today. She affected an exaggerated posh accent. "Oh yes, I have never in all my years heard such dreadful language upon my fair ears. I was definitely not raised in the Bed and thus I need constant protecting from the dirty world, mister man." She fluttered her eyelashes.
Xiaobao just laughed and when she punched him in the side it was like hitting a slab of beef. Flexing her fingers, Ayika looked around at the men working nearby and noticed something; one brother was missing.
"Hey," she said. "Where's Xinfei? Mom packed for both of you."
At this Xiaobao looked slightly guilty. "Well, you see, last night he came to me saying he had-"
"Oh hell," Ayika said, sinking her head in exasperation. "Let me guess, he had a 'sure-fire product'. That's the third scheme this month and he's back here within two days each time. I swear, you two are lucky that Mister Gaoli wants to take care of you guys enough to hold his job."
As soon as she said it she knew she had phrased that very wrong. Some memories were always raw. "Wait, no I mean-"
"Nah, I got you." But Xiaobao was smiling a little less as he continued, "Yeah, Xinfei's got a bunch of little boxes with Fire Nation stamps on the lids. He says a man told him these things can let you summon flames like a fire bender, so he's headed up into the city to try and sell them. By now I just try to make sure he doesn't have too much money on him at any time. And keep it out of our mom's hands. She'd just give it to him if he asked."
He shook his head but then he looked smiled and looked over at Ayika. "Hey, make sure to thank your ma for me tonight. You should be getting on anyways, off to serve the all the fancy lords and ladies," he finished with a slight grin.
This time he dodged her punch. In retaliation he leaned an elbow down on her shoulder, using her as a perfectly sized armrest. "Shut up," Ayika grumbled as she rolled her eyes up at him. "I'll try to find your idiot brother if I get a chance."
As she walked off, Xiaobao yelled one last thing. "Hey, watch out when you get by the Exclusion. I heard that there's a chance some idiot university boys are going to try and do something over that way."
Ayika waved behind her and quickened her pace. Xiaobao sighed as she disappeared through the crowd. Ayika had never been one for walking away from danger. As Xiaobao turned back to the water, stretching his shoulders before returning to work, he heard someone spit on the street and a dim growl of "Islanders' slaves". He swiveled back but he couldn't make out which of the hundreds of passing people that might have been.
Even down here, where thousands of livelihoods depended on trade there were still those who feared and resented everything outside the walls. Xiaobao had yet to see any "cultural degradation" but even he had to admit that many of these crates he unloaded were filled with products once made here in the city.
Several blocks away, Ayika grumbled to herself. Perfect, more nationalist university brats. Why couldn't those rich boys stay in their mansions instead of making their way all the way out to her town? She personally suspected those students needed to keep the glue pots a bit farther from their noses based on how many of those stupid protest posters they put up everywhere. There were always rumors that they were about to do something bigger than just defacing walls and loitering in tea shops; all likely started, Ayika thought, by the boys themselves.
She made her way down the street alongside a crowded canal. Long watercraft slid along beside her, guided by pilots swaying their single rear oar from side to side, they themselves often nearly buried behind piles of cargo. The street passed by a boarded up temple to the Kuang River spirit, and a little farther on a half-destroyed building in the middle of the block. Ayika glanced over at that site, the structure had been completely intact just yesterday. Now huge spikes of twisted stone jutted up from the earth through shattered timbers as though the rock had melted suddenly decided to flow like water. Ayika skipped past the line of men piling wood scraps into a cart and quickened her pace. Benders were always good at causing destruction, and there was rarely any good to come from asking why.
As Ayika left the docks, the buildings became more ornate and the stone bridges arching over the canals gained elaborate carvings. Of course this was still Kuang Harbor but the golden comb-over was nice, nevertheless. There were tea houses with painted screens, drinking houses with gilt signs, and brothels filled with the faint sound of instruments and the swish of silk. Ayika supposed there was a measure of insecurity in this gaudiness, and as she rounded a corner in the path she confronted the explanation.
Ahead, an intersections of canals marked off a wide rectangular moat in the middle of the waterlogged town. The green surface was broken by hundreds of small boats scuttling back and forth like water-striders. Yet despite all the commercial activity at river level, on this block the buildings were broken by no doors or windows. No citizen of the Kingdoms wanted to be reminded about the embarrassment that rose up across that water. The lights and towers of the Foreign Exclusionary District smiled back uncaringly; an island of alien red spires and gold mansions set down in the Earth Kingdoms' greatest city.
Denied room to expand outwards the Islanders had instead built up. Underneath that forest of tall towers with curling eaves, in those tight streets and soaring walkways, music and light blazed in constant excess. At times Ayika could almost sympathize with protest posters that continually appeared on the walls around here. Even now she passed a tired old man with a scraper and a cart removing a fresh crop of paper outrage from white plaster.
The poster appeared to say, "Strength to the People! Resist Foreigners!" Or at least it probably had to begin with. Now after the old man's efforts against the glue the remaining fragments of characters seemed to announce something like, "Give the Foreigners a Good Nap!" which while considerate, was probably not the author's intent. Beyond, a line of similar painted proclamations stretched along the walls facing the water, shouting inken words in broad black characters across at those alien towers. Even ink was threatening when painted by ten thousand furious hands.
Striving to shake matters both international and lexicographical from her head, Ayika moved past the Exclusion moat and quickened her pace. However, soon the foot traffic slowed to a rate that was ridiculous even for Kuang Harbor. A block further it became a solid human wall.
Ayika rose up on her toes, which brought her up to about average local height, but unfortunately just revealed more heads in front of her. The air was thick with waiting and where the crowd managed some movement it revealed a palpable tension rising like a flock of disturbed sparrows. Up ahead, the Temple Street intersection was entirely blocked by uniformed city guards.
In Ayika's experience, the only Kuang Harbor denizens who stood near a guard were already in cuffs. However, today the field of repulsion seemed to have failed and while none of the pedestrians were touching any part of a green uniform, a single deep breath on a guard's part would land half a dozen counts of accosting a watchman on the docket. Mystifyingly, behind them Temple Street was completely empty.
"All right, what gives?" Ayika said, after squeezing and pushing and elbowing her way to the front of the pack. She glared up at a guard and tried to downplay the fact that with the crowd behind her she was almost pressed against his chest. "Some of us have to get to work. You guys planning on nabbing the whole town?"
This just earned her a growl and a shove against another pedestrian who had not bathed in far too long. They tried to push her back again but Ayika instead spun and slid sidewise across the front of the mob. She honed in on the next guard, a smooth cheeked young man who kept reaching up to check that the folded fabric fan on his uniform hat was still right.
This time Ayika pitched her voice up to sickeningly sweet and clutched her hands in front of her. "Sorry officer, but do you know when we will be able to get by to the tram station? I'm terribly afraid of being late."
The young guard shrugged with a small measure of embarrassment. "Sorry miss, can't say."
Inwardly, Ayika sighed. Of course the man responded to the silk and lilies voice.
He said, "Yeah, 'fraid Temple Street's closed all the way from the Exclusion bridge. Apparently, the other lot didn't have enough room on their own roads so the king granted permits rather than risk upsetting the spirits. The way should be open soon but I couldn't tell you exactly when."
Ayika wasn't mollified. "What are you talking about: spirits? What could be so important that you close down all of Temple Street?"
She felt a jab in her back. An old man behind her grumbled, "Mouthy tribals don't know a damn thing. You live in a tree, girl? The Ambassador's dead. This is his funeral walk."
Ayika spun to deliver some insults of her own when those words sank in. Naruhama, the Fire Nation's ambassador to the Kingdoms was dead. Suddenly the indistinct mutters of the crowd separated into audible words. Angry words like "Foreigners", "War", "Corrupt", "Spirits", and again "Foreigners".
Keenly feeling her skin color, Ayika felt herself freeze. She had been born in this city, and sometimes she forgot that didn't make her a native. That was dangerous to forget. Somewhere in the distance down the street she started to hear the rhythmic stamping of approaching feet. City folk weren't necessarily known for their geographical aptitude or tough concepts like foreigners coming in two varieties. People were staring at her. She needed to move. Suddenly a shift in the wind brought a dense cloud of incense smoke down the street.
"Hai!"
A wordless shout rolled out from down the street and six female dancers burst around the corner trailing blue smoke. The women landed in perfect synchronicity, lithe figures dressed in gauzy foreign swaths of pink and red. Their dance was intense and sharp, smooth undulations changing to violent jabs in a blink. Ayika caught her breath as they leaped again, impossibly far, alighting with the fierceness of a striking eagle. It was like watching fire dance.
The dancers spun again and cymbals crashed, small disks of metal tied to the inside of their knees struck together with each leap and lunge. Behind them emerged a number of stately Islander men with narrow black beards and long dark crimson robes. They were in orderly rows and those at the edges of the group held balls of floating flame hovering magically above their hands. The fires they held shone like bright planets.
Then the heart of the parade emerged. There were more torches and incense, more dancers and figures in dark robes, and held above it all was a small pavilion, a covered sedan chair born aloft by twelve strong men. Gauzy red curtains hung around it and ribbons drifted in the night air behind it. The canopy glittered with dark feathers.
As Ayika stared, a single breath of wind brushed the torch flames and lifted aside that thin curtain for a moment. Inside the palanquin was the vague shape of a seated figure, knees clutched in front, but all over wrapped in a thick brown cloth, a solid mass of fiber and knots. Above its chest there sat a wooden mask, massive and ornate, staring out with a powerful intensity. It was a human body, prepared for some unknown ritual.
"Ambassador Naruhama," Ayika whispered.
That bundle was what remained the most powerful foreigner in the entire city. He was the man who had shaped the post-war world; Ayika's entire young life. Next to the pageantry of the funeral procession, his simple cloth-wrapped body seemed oddly humble. Then Ayika felt her eyes catch on the mask. As she stared at the stern features wrote in dark wood it seemed she could sense something strange about it, like an echo of embers burning in the distance. It felt like something was wrong behind the air. Distantly, Ayika wondered how the Westerners' guardian spirits knew how to find them all the way over here in this distant land. Or did the foreigners simply make new ones?
Then the breeze faded and the curtain fell back into place, turning the grotesque shape back into a vague silhouette. A moment later the tail end of the procession crossed the intersection and passed back out of sight behind the yellow-roofed temples.
The instant the city guards stepped back, the waiting crowd surged as the stalled momentum burst forth. Ayika felt the same burst of energy but for some reason she didn't move. She stood there, buffeted by people pushing past her in both directions, and stared at the empty space behind the departed palanquin. Suddenly she felt a chill, despite the late summer heat. The ambassador was dead and it seemed like the Impenetrable City was already trembling. Change was coming, for good or ill.
Ayika shook her head. It was already getting uncomfortably late so she started to really hustle towards the tram. After just a few blocks the station loomed across like a truncated stone ziggurat summited by a large canopy. An elevated stone track shot off from that platform, one end of one of the city's vast web, looking like a network of aqueducts which flowed the wrong way. Those pre-mechanical bender-powered trams were the only thing that allowed this massive city to feed itself. Without them all those nobles in the distant city center would probably starve in a day.
Ayika rushed up the long stone steps with her city passport held high. The loader-men were already moving off the freight car, she only had a few moments. She ran past the airy noble-class car and began frantically examining the steerage compartments for a space. A frantic glance over her shoulder showed the government's adept earth benders sauntering out of their break rooms, the yellow royal seals glittering on their green uniforms.
Ayika seized the nearest open door and shoved herself into the pressed mass of commuters. The crowd resisted but she took advantage of her lack of height to use her shoulders at chest level. People loudly complained and for an instant Ayika thought the ensconced democracy was going to succeed at pushing her out but then the car shook slightly on its rollers. The earth benders were on board.
Behind these ornate cars weathered by decades of constant use, the earth bender adepts settled on their perches and their magic awoke in response to each gesture, mimicking the motion of their muscles. They drew their fists down to their hips and planted their feet. Then both of them punched out with a grunt and in response the grinding, scraping, rattling conveyance rumbled into action. They were off, all carried through the air on the vaulted trackway of pale, weather-stained stone above the sea of tile roofs.
The harbor town with its lace of green canals passed below as the red Exclusion towers were left behind. To the left, lay that muddy river corpse called the Bed with all the things and people that the official citizenry would rather not consider. Behind that was the towering city wall and its great entrance gate. From up here it looked like it all fit together. That made it easier to hope that it did.
Ayika was in a fine position to enjoy these sights as her struggles to find a seat in the tram had secured space only for her seat. Most of her front half hung out a window where Ayika sighed wearily as she braced her arms on the outside of the car. A noise from above proved to be a gaggle of urchins riding for free on the roof, an illegal decision which right now appeared very appealing to someone who could feel what she hoped was only a bag of rice pressed against her rear. There was talk in town that some Islander named Miohuito wanted to make new, faster trams powered by steam engines, but with the speed things changed in this country that would be next century at best.
A wordless cry rose from the earth benders above the clattering din and Ayika looked up to see the Farmer's Wall painted across the horizon. The tram rode along level with the rooftops of the town, above the slowly grinding mass of carts and people flowing towards the city gate, but the wall still seemed to be infinitely tall above. As the train raced forward, Ayika felt like she was falling from the sky towards the ground, plummeting down at a pinprick hole. She pressed back against the side of the tram car and held her breath as the sky was abruptly swallowed by the tunnel mouth. The blackness stretched on, and as always her lungs gave out before the dark. So she burst gasping into the light and into the Impenetrable City.
The greatest settlement of mankind was something beyond comprehension, it could only be perceived in parts. Before her was the Lower Ring where houses and compounds blended with markets, squares, temples, inns, houses, workshops, and apartments on and on in a never ending sea of humanity. Smoke rose from factories, beasts pawed the ground, boats navigated narrow waterways to form a tapestry that was less a construct man and more a terrain type, rising from the laws of nature just like a mountain range or a rolling plain.
Ayika felt a grin tug at the corner of her mouth. Grandma Aka used to say that all things were connected by the spirit world. That everything had a soul and all souls were a part of the same magic of the world, both when they were alive and while they were dead; whether they were humans or gods. Everything served a role in the endless cycle of balance. Ayika breathed in the rushing wind as she looked out over a web of rooftops and chimneys that stretched for kilometers of unending activity. She could believe that here. This city was more alive than any priest could imagine, and it was a god she'd be glad to worship.
After half an hour, the rocking, grinding tram neared a second ring-wall deep in the city, this one nearly as high as the first. Past that, in the Middle Ring the buildings were at once smaller, being private residences instead of apartments, and more spread about, with most having small gardens surrounding them. Then, finally, the tram cars ground to a halt above a neat city square.
Out on the station platform, Ayika took one more steadying breath and turned to cast a glance off at the distant artificial plateau of the third ring. That was the Noble's Wall, beyond which the golden-blooded lived with their vast mansions and expansive grounds. Somewhere even further beyond that lay the great palace of the Earth King, the center of this city as the city was the center of the world. Ayika turned away from the Noble's Wall with a snort. For herself, she was content for all that sort to hide away, the lesser breed of condescension she already dealt with daily was plenty sufficient. With a sigh, she abandoned the vista down the long steps back to the busy city streets and the school where she worked.
...