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The thoroughly named Ba Sing Se Legacy School for Young Ladies stood just off a small brick-paved square. The large two-story building was topped with soot-darkened tiles and fronted by a pillared gate gleaming with rigorously applied green paint that strove to disguise the aging wood beneath. Ayika skirted past the main entrance and around the school's outer wall towards the servants entrance. Across the street she saw a small crowd of people loitering restlessly in front of a row of narrow dark residences and unsuccessful boutiques. Another day and still the anti-foreigner protesters continued to come.
Tracing her hand along the stones of the compound wall, Ayika felt scraps of paper and residue of glue from hastily ripped down bills or posters. She sighed as she tugged open the little side gate. The headmaster had assured his workers that the protesters would soon quiet down but today those troublemakers appeared to have received reinforcements. So much difficulty, all for hiring one teacher who was willing to say some kind words about the Fire Nation.
Inside the school's cramped scullery, the other servant girls were all bustling through the preparations of the day. The few who could spare the time sent a few dirty looks Ayika's way over her late arrival. Ignoring those glares she removed her boots, slid into a pair of neat grey slippers, and quickly made her way to the little alcove in the corner that served as their changing room, beginning to pull off her street clothes as she moved. Two other latecomers were already squeezed in there, twisting each-others' hair into the regulation school-staff bun.
Ayika's green and grey uniform dress was halfway over her head when a rough and authoritative voice rang through the crowded space. "Hop to it, girls! We've got bare an hour 'till the little ladies arrive and half my staff apparently decided to sleep it in! Frizzy-Hair, has the dusky sluggard shown up yet?"
Frantically tying the uniform's sash above her hips, Ayika cast a desperate look at the other two tardy girls, pleading for some small solidarity against a woman who refused to learn the names of any of her workers. For half a second Ayika thought that their answering smiles were good news until they both picked up nearby trays and dashed out in a flurry of pretend work.
One of them said, "Oh Mrs Jiangsu, we were waiting for her for forever, but she just snuck in right before you got here."
Five levels of hell would not be enough to effect their punishment. Unfortunately, Ayika's problem was now less metaphysical and more immediate. A matronly monolith advanced, one who already held a remarkably dim view of the young Tribal girl's character.
Ayika snapped up into a facsimile of attention before the head of staff. "Mrs Jiangsu! It's true, I was a few minutes past when I usually arrive. The tram from Kuang Harbor must have run slower today. Maybe the funeral procession messed something up or-"
"Can it, Dusky," Jiangsu replied, already turning to look around the room as if her attention deserved to be elsewhere. "I don't really care if you had your own funeral, when what I need is a girl out in the halls polishing the woodwork. So hop to it without taking the time to flap your yap for once now so help me are we clear?" This was delivered in a seemingly impossible mixture of malice and unconcern that equally disregarded the addressee and punctuation.
Ayika widened her eyes in disbelief and gestured down at her waist sash which she now saw was the wrong way out. "But I've just got on my servers uniform! How am I supposed to keep it from being mussed if I'm crawling around the place with polish?" There was a touch of panic in her voice. The penalties for stained uniforms were quite steep, supposedly to 'discourage sloppiness'.
Mrs Jiangsu's watery, malevolent squint turned back and Ayika involuntarily swallowed as though trying to recapture those escaped sentences. Mrs Jiangsu bore what on her passed for a smile. "I fail, girl, to see how that is my concern. Out with you now!"
There were scattered titters from across the scullery as Ayika gathered up the supplies and rushed out into the main halls. In the back of her mind, she brooded that her presence at least seemed to be a unifying force for the rest of the native blood servants. That gave her something to dwell on as found herself laboring with rolled up sleeves over screens and banisters and pillars in the impossible task of disguising decades of schoolhouse wear with a clean shine.
The building that the Legacy School for Young Ladies occupied had once been the elegantly apportioned city house of some wealthy trader or minor government functionary but it had seen many years and several owners since that period. The slow decline of this neighborhood had been mirrored in the slow increase of well disguised chips and scrapes in the woodwork as money for replacements had evaporated. So the descent had gone on until the property fell within the budget of an ambitious but unsuccessful university graduate; a man who had hoped that a school for young ladies of means but no name would salve the disappointment of his failure to secure a government appointment. The man himself, Headmaster Gang, could always be seen sneaking around his school stealing panicked glances towards every corner, as though any unobserved section would immediately descend into ruin.
It was Mister Gang's flights of ambitious fancy that saved Ayika now. The headmaster, on one of his consistently unsurprising surprise inspections, decided it would be unbecoming for the the sole employee 'of noticeable ethnicity' to be the only visible laborer. It was this same desire for cosmopolitan credentials that had allowed a well-spoken, when she wished to be, girl of the Water Tribe to achieve employment here to begin with. Ayika had secured her post with an interview and had also managed to secure the immediate ire of all those other working city-girls who had schemed long and hard for such a cushy job.
Ayika took the headmaster's reassignment gladly and began manning the tea station on by the classrooms on the second floor. After the initial flurry of adjusting window screens to let in air but block any breeze that might ruffle papers and placing an extra desk for a new student, her job was to demurely welcome the students and insure a steady supply of full tea cups. Since the older girls had by that point in their education realized that leaving for the lavatory during a teacher's lecture was strongly frowned on, this was very light work. This allowed Ayika to just linger in a corner with her perfunctory teapot as she listened to the lectures themselves.
Most of her fellow workers considered the school to be a great job because Mister Gang's pursuit of an aristocratic appearance had left the building rather overstaffed, giving the servants plenty of free time for gossip in the back rooms. They saw Ayika's refusal to join in these conclaves as stubbornness, or some sort of primitive superstition. However, Ayika loved simply being near the classrooms.
Back in the Bed, she'd attended her back-alley schoolmaster longer than most of the children who'd bothered at all. She'd only ceased begging coppers off her mother when at nine she could no longer spare the time with her hours in the maid-service; by the time she returned from work the ragged writing-master was inevitably sunk deep in his bottle. As a consequence, Ayika could read better than anyone on her street though her brushwork had never advanced beyond a scrawl of smudged characters. However, here at the school she had discovered something beyond mere technical skills; she had found education.
Ayika stood hidden by the carved wooden screen in the corner, her uniform finally put to rights, listening to her favorite teacher speak. Professor Lizhen was a small grey-haired man, prone to fiddling with things in his hands as he listened or thought. One might think him meek until he began to speak on his subjects of passion. He was brilliant, kind to the servants, and even tried to remember Ayika's name instead of just calling her 'the tribal girl'.
Lizhen called himself a seeker of truth in all forms and places. It was a policy that, when combined with a tendency to publicly advocate those truths, explained his current service at such an institution so diminished from his former post at the Royal University.
At the moment Ayika could hear Lizhen treading back and forth behind his desk before his slightly awestruck students. His manner of teaching history was so far removed from the memorization of titles and names that had thus far filled their educational history that those students who weren't enraptured still maintained careful attention out of fear they were somehow missing the expected rote material. From her half-hidden position behind the wood screen Ayika could almost imagine she was one of those girls too.
"Now, there is of course merit to this author's analysis of the Fire Lords and how they influenced the course of the War," Professor Lizhen continued his lecture, flicking down the prepared readings onto the desk with a decisive slap. "However, it is my observation that behind those crowned men there lies a certain inevitability to the conflict that the esteemed and government approved author simply does not give proper weight to."
Ayika silently grinned at the uncomfortable shifting that always accompanied the professor's forays into his trademarked taboo theses. Peeking out between the carved patterns she could see the varied reactions: a nervous twitchiness from the girls who expected government agents to burst in at any moment, a relaxed laying down of brushes from those who had realized that Lizhen would not be permitted to place his own theories on the approved tests, and from the back of the room the sound of the new student's chair scooting forward in eager anticipation.
Now that he'd left the official material, Professor Lizhen began to hit his stride, gesturing broadly at each important point as though he was still addressing the university hall where he had until lately held sway.
"Back before the First Aggression, that nation of newly unified islands looked out to see a world where our kingdoms filled their horizon. The Fire Nation had been reborn in the crucible of industry and was ready to grow, but everything had already been claimed. The following expansion might be seen as the natural readjustment of the world to a new balance of power. Our culture's time of ascendancy gave way to another's, just as long ago the raiding Water Tribes' time had given way to the growing might of our Earth Kingdoms." Ayika couldn't help but wear a smirk at hearing of her own ethnicity's ancient glory days.
Lizhen no longer seemed to see the small classroom in front of him. His voice projected to some distant focus that here had to lay half way across the street outside. "This balance of forces continues into the spirit world. In the West, their spirituality was reformed and so their guardian spirits, their local gods of change and transformation, are honored by all. Here, our own traditions have begun to fight our society, rather than encourage its growth. So our gods are forgotten as they fall into irrelevance. We must take this as a warning. The spirit world is a mirror that changes even what it reflects. To forget it is to forget half the universe."
There was a break in the professor's oration as Lizhen began to shuffle amongst the papers of his desk for some chart or map, a task which frequently took inordinately long due to his habit of fiddling with everything he held. In this pause one of the students hesitantly began to raise her hand to ask a question, a modernist classroom custom that at this school was only tolerated by Professor Wen. The professor interrupted his search with delight as he saw the motion and gestured for her to stand.
"Yes, Miss Gaoli?"
Lili Gaoli, normally an incredibly energetic if not particularly diligent student, was now wilting under this unusual teaching method. Hidden, Ayika could grin bit at her discomfort. Lili was tall, thin, pretty, and generally insufferable. Mister Gaoli's company had been a good employer to the Bao brothers but everything she'd seen about the boss's daughter Lili cemented her in Ayika's mind as a rich brat.
Lili began, "Teacher Wen, if the Islanders had their… That is, if they were on top during the long war because of their machines and boats and it's a cycle, then when we won the war wouldn't that mean that they were below us again? Except I know that you've been saying that our government should learn from the Islander's culture and their relationship with the spirits and...I mean that you, I heard..." At that point her bravery gave out and her legs folded her back down into her seat, her face red and flustered.
Lizhen didn't seem to notice her stammering delivery at all and instead leapt into an enthusiastic answer. "An excellent question, Miss Gaoli! Yes, in the light of victory my proposed reforms to adopt Western methods and practices must seem odd indeed. But as for the question you asked I have another of my own..." And at this moment he placed his normally trembling hands down firm on the desk. "Why do you say that we won the war?"
There was another flurry of reactions ranging from a few jaded sighs, to a flock of outraged words dying on young lips, and one poorly masked grin from the new student in the back row. Several hands shot up but this time Lizhen waved them down.
"Yes, yes. I know that was needlessly dramatic, but it is necessary to illustrate the danger of assumptions. Yes, the Fire Nation's armies withdrew. But why did this happen? Was there a great battle our kingdoms won, some grand stratagem? No, at best we held our ground. The Avatar did great things but in the end the decision to end the war was made by those who first started it, with a palace coup and a new Fire Lord on their throne. So while our country still smoldered, the other side simply pocketed their winnings and changed the rules of the game. We cannot allow ourselves to fall to unjustified hubris."
"Even here at home, you only have to look in an import shop to see that the day of the Fire Nation's culture is not over. I've seen many of you girls wearing their latest fashions even this week. No, the West is as strong as ever because they have looked to the future and thus molded it. They have allied with their national spirits. But the secrets of their success are things that we can easily duplicate here."
Lili had been slowly gathering confidence from the shared supportive looks from the girls around her. Ayika scowled at the little hand signs they shared from the half hidden position under their low desks. Then Lili's hand rose back up, and was rewarded by Professor Lizhen with a nod.
She stood and smoothed her dress with the haughtiness that only a self-confident teenager who had read a single book about politics can produce. Lili Gaoli then began, "But, really isn't the lesson we can learn from their culture what mistakes to avoid? Even without a big defeat by our armies, the Fire Nation couldn't keep together enough to continue the war, so they degenerated back to being merchants. That had got to be a spiritual decline of some sort. Even if we didn't strictly win..." By the sound of it that was a enormous concession. "...they still lost."
She sat back down clearly proud of the argument which was obviously going to make the professor have to go and reshape his theories according to the revelations of a fifteen year old girl.
Behind the screen Ayika scowled at the insolence but Professor Lizhen simply beamed. "Soundly reasoned, Miss Gaoli!" he smiled. "And many authors have made that point, although I'm not sure your father would like to hear you belittling his merchantine profession."
There was a snort of laughter from the back of the class but Lili's venomous searching glares found no culprit.
Lizhen continued without pause, "And on the message of opening our minds to other views of thought, we here have a unique opportunity today! Miss Miohuito?"
All the student's sleek and neatly coiffed heads turned as one to face the rear of the classroom. The new girl, until now leaning forward on her desk with a lazy smirk, was now wearing a smile frozen by this sudden and unexpected attention.
Professor Lizhen noticed none of these details, still soaring in the rapturous world of academic debate. He eagerly gestured for the new student to rise, which she did, slowly. "Yes, Miss Mizumi Miohuito, if you would be so kind. I know this is your first day with us but we would all be fascinated to hear your unique perspective. In your personal experience how is the end of the wars considered today back at your home in the Fire Nation?"
That girl was an Islander? Ayika pressed her eye against a hole in the carved screen. Living in the Bed had given her a very liberal view of what appearance constituted an average citizen of the Earth Kingdoms, but now that she was pressed the differences jumped out at her. This girl's eyes were a dark amber and her hair was a bit different from the classical Earth Kingdoms black, instead shaded with a color like silken rust in her proscribed bun and the straight locks that fell to frame her face. Her cheeks now flushed with embarrassment in a color that suggested her tanned skin was backed by ripe grain rather than blood. However, she stood resolutely at her desk.
"Of course Teacher Wen, I am pleased to." Mizumi's voice was calm under the rolling buzz of her accent but from Ayika's angle she could see her knees shaking slightly under her dress. The poor girl straightened into what resembled a military posture with her hands behind her back and spoke pleasantly, her eyes locked onto Professor Wen.
Mizumi said, "There are of course those who disapprove of Fire Lord Zuko agreeing to make peace with your Earth King when victory was at hand, particularly those of the military lineages. However, most people know that the nation is doing much better without having to pay for constant war. The former colonies sell us materials as easily as when they were sworn to the Fire Lord, and now the military does not requisition it all. Finally, Ba Sing Se is more valuable as a customer than as a subject or a pile of cinders, even if we have to come as merchants this time." Her rigid stance was broken briefly to flash a vindictive smile at the Gaoli girl, who fumed back while clenching her hands at her desk.
Ayika wondered about that. As soon as Lili had heard Mizumi's name there was something in her expression beyond politics. Something that made Lili take special offense. Did they know each other somehow? Lili was now writing on her notepaper with furious speed. Mizumi made a small bow to Professor Lizhen and sat back down, fussing with her skirt like someone who was used to wearing less restrictive clothing.
The rest of the students also didn't appear like receiving lecture from a foreigner and even Lizhen was beginning to perceive that this topic was stirring up some dangerous emotions.
He coughed softly. "Yes, well the economic dominance in the west coast territories is unquestionable but-"
Lili was back up on her feet, shooting a glance down at a few notes she had scrawled. Slightly overwhelmed, Lizhen motioned for her to speak, which she began to do so before he had completely raised his hand. Lili presented to the class a winning smile with all the friendliness of a manticore.
"I'd like to thank my classmate for sharing her delightful experience in a foreign culture." Foreign was pronounced like the name of a puppy that had done something embarrassing on a carpet. "But, Professor, didn't you say that we should examine the source when determining the truth? That essay we read by..." She glanced downward at her notes. "...official Professor Ma, wrote that their government heavily edits their school materials. There are simple facts showing that we won, like how the numbers and talent of the Islander sorcerers declined. I mean, they had to draft their women into the military."
The Islander girl snapped back on her feet the instant her newfound opponent was seated. Professor Lizhen just blinked rapidly at this sudden enthusiasm, which the new student decided to take as permission. Mizumi said, "I welcome my new friend, and thank her for pointing out the cultural error of deciding that women have a brain between their ears. I particularly welcome the personal evidence she demonstrates." Snickers and scowls showed the hit had landed. "For facts of decline, I would love to read what must be a very detailed account of this Kingdom's execution and mutilation of my nation's fire benders."
Lizhen could see that this was out of hand and tried clearing his throat repeatedly to attract the lost attention of his class, but Lili Gaoli was already up and speaking, not even sparing a moment to brush aside the stray hairs that had slipped out of her elegantly pinned hairdo. "I'd be happy to share some sources with my lovely classmate. Maybe they got lost amongst the paperwork for their colonial slave labor camps. Of course, all those were regrettable mistakes that must happen when their so-called priests were fighting under command of their mad god-king!"
This time Mizumi snapped up from her seat with such speed that her teacup made a rattling journey towards the edge of the desk before it reconsidered. She was vibrating with the outrage of someone arguing with a well researched idiot, wishing they could remember more pithy facts to support the obvious truth. She made her attempt anyway, command of the language briefly melting under frustration.
"Yes, just as no one in this city could being blamed for their secret police who practiced of execution innocent civilians!"
Across the room Lili was ready for more, but the foreign girl slammed her hands down on the desk with the ceramic rattling of her shifting teacup. "And now I believe that we should give our attention back to our teacher so that we can hear from someone who actually knows something! Thank you, Teacher!"
Mizumi crisply bowed and folded down heavily in the silence that followed, punctuated by a gentle tinkling crash as her cup finally took its threatened plunge.
Ayika shook herself out of the spectators' daze and realized that the broken cup meant she actually had a job to do. As she scooted over she heard Professor Lizhen clear his throat once again.
"Ahm, uh yes. Thank you girls for your...impassioned input. I think now might be a good time to start writing your, um, essays for the day. First, I want you to get out your..."
As Ayika knelt down beside the desk to gather up the cup shards in a rag, she glanced up. Mizumi's eyes were locked forward on the professor, very deliberately not looking at the quiet whispers fluttering in the other corners of the room. The joints that gripped her ink brush were white and vibrating, but under the anger there was a quiet despair. Suddenly those amber eyes met Ayika's own and she hurriedly looked down, mopping up the tea spill as quickly as she could. Somehow being that close to Mizumi felt like spying at an actor behind the curtain.
When she returned to her post, Ayika cast a look back and saw Mizumi staring fixedly in her direction. From where she stood, Ayika couldn't tell if the girl was looking at Professor Lizhen or at her through the carved wood behind him. Ayika quietly left through the servant's door and motioned to the other servant who was leaning against the wall by the maids' station, signaling about the wet rag in her hand and her need to swap out of that room for a moment. She was rewarded with a dirty look, but then again when was she not.
As she dumped the cup shards in a bucket, Ayika glanced out one of the tiny ventilation windows. It overlooked the street since the actual classrooms would never dare to open to anything but one of the two small yet elegant courtyards in the middle of the school compound. Outside, the crowd of grumbling nationalists had spilled out of the dim cafes and there were now furtive knots loitering in the side alleys as well. As she watched, one of the men noticed her looking down and tossed a bit of rubbish in the general direction of the school with vague malice.
Ayika made a rude hand gesture in their direction and was rewarded with an equally rude invective about foreigners. Ayika heard that Professor Lizhen had never been married and though she loved the man, the ease with which ill feeling seemed to spring up around him did appear to offer an explanation. For all his study of spirits, he was perhaps overly optimistic in his assessments of the human spirit. Ayika swung the window slats shut with a click.
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