Chapter 19 – A Place Forgotten

Darkness patched away to impressions of light, and the muted curtain gave way to soft voices. "It's not that unusual," Zuko said. "Teenagers often make bonfires at the beaches, and sometimes they get out of hand. There won't be any large scale investigation."

Katara stirred and tried to sit up. A gentle hand supported her back, and she looked into the face of Suki beside her, whose eyes were red-rimmed from crying. "You can rest longer," she assured her. "Aang seems to be well again, although he's still unconscious. His breathing is easy now."

"Have you found my brother?"

"No. We still can't find Appa, either," she said. "I went back to the beach we landed on, but he wasn't there."

"How long has it been since we landed? My head hurts too much to think."

"Two days," replied Zuko. His voice was tight. The grace before the ability of the survivors of the navy battle to return by was reaching its limit, a pressing danger not lost on him. "My father could be anywhere by now." He poured drinking water into a cup and offered it to her.

Katara sat up from the rug and looked over the still-sleeping body of Aang. His clothing was ripped apart, stained, and charred, but the last of his injuries were tended to. They brought her up to speed with what had happened since her last healing session began, but there was no change to their status. The town had suppressed the flames, chalked it up to a wildfire started by squatters at the Firelord's abandoned beachhouse, and gone back to their usual routine. Their location was relatively secluded at the outskirt of the town and no one had investigated the house they'd taken up in. They had moved to an upper story of the residence to give them more time to react in case anyone entered. A chevron-patterned sienna and umber rug spread below them in rough flax edged in tassels. A low cherry-wood table was set nearby with water and snacks sourced from the household pantry—dried fruit and nuts, pickled vegetables, and cooked rice topped with umeboshi and flaked nori. Zuko asked if she was hungry, then took the bowl of rice, heated it between his hands, and offered it to her. It was perfectly steamed and warm as she sat to eat.

The interior was decorated with local shells and conches. On the walls were arrangements of pressed flowers framed in groupings and woven twine cradling glass floats in intricate webbing. The room was an open second-story veranda partially screened with bamboo lattice, and the center face of the gallery viewed the ocean. It was late evening in partial clouds. The colors playing across the water glittered in a gentle, intermittent breeze from the sunset. As Katara ate she watched them shift from firelight to mauve and vermilion. She set aside the empty bowl, inspected the still-sleeping boy, and strolled out to the water by the time darkness set in. Suki and Zuko remained at the veranda. Silver and midnight blue were all that remained on the ocean. She waded out to her thighs, trying to restrain her frenetic emotions and the thoughts which bounced from one wild possibility to the next unrelenting. The tide washed against her skin, back and forth, with beautifully warm early-season water.

A disturbance swept wake across the water's surface. Katara looked up. In the depth of the channel a lone, heavily damaged ship made passing. She froze in place. The ship was identical to those which had been at the blockade. It flew a Fire sigil and progressed at lethargic pace, heading into the shelter of the large crescent of the Fire Nation's primary landmass. Zuko, at the railing above, had stood up urgently to watch. He tore down the wooden staircase and splashed ankle-deep into the water with his eyes trained on the ship.

"Zhao. That's his flagship. They put it through hell and back—it's barely holding together," said Zuko.

"Have any other ships come by?"

"No, this is the first we've seen. Suki and I have kept a constant watch." He squinted as it continued into the distance ahead. "It isn't heading to the capital city's harbor." They looked in the other direction, but nothing else was approaching, and it seemed the ship was truly the only one returning from the battle. Ten minutes passed waiting in the water as he followed its path to the very limit of visibility and they thought over what it could mean. Suki had come out to join them and stood languidly at the beach. "Listen. If that is Zhao, he might be going to report to my father. It doesn't seem he's been ordered to the Firelord's Harbor. He's going to the opposite shore of Ember Island, on the mainland. There's nothing over there."

"Should we follow him?"

"How could we? Aang isn't awake and we can't leave him here."

They sat on the cooling sand from which the accumulated heat of the daylight was rapidly fading. Nearby was a ring of toppled stones with charcoal and the burnt remains of firewood from a past bonfire. Its ash had spread across the volcanic sand, darkening it further. A waxing crescent moon gave them partial argent light to see by.

Suki stirred, then jumped up, looking towards the sky. Something passed in front of the moonlight, changed its course, and dropped towards them. "Sokka!"

Katara stood up as her brother landed the air bison at the tide-washed beach, then leapt down to the sand. Suki flung herself into his arms. He calmed her down, kissed her, and waved to the pair. In a reassuring voice, he said, "Hey. I'm back."

Katara shouted, "Where did you go? We were worried sick, we thought you were dead!"

"That isn't the first time you've thought so, Sis, and here I am, still alive and well. I went back to retrieve Appa, but he had fled from the beach as the fire took the island. I just found him again earlier today, he was hiding in a cave covered in seaweed and algae. While I was tracking that ship, I saw you three on the beach."

Zuko asked, "Where did that ship come from? Are there others?"

"No, it's the only one. It came down from the north, from the battle. I think it might be the only survivor."

Zuko said, "Aang is inside the house. He's alive but still unconscious. Now that we have Appa we're mobile again. I want to follow that ship. I've been thinking about it, and the only reason my father would have left Aang behind like that is if he himself had been too injured to follow up. Zhao seems to be heading somewhere specific. I think he might have been notified as to where my father would be, including in event that the main beachhouse was not accessible."

They agreed and Sokka brought Aang down and laid him in the saddle. They boarded and took off after the tattered ship, sailing low across the water so that the bison's toes skimmed the surface. Sokka looked worried at the state of the younger boy and did his best to console Suki. Zuko sat with the reins and kept a distance behind the ship to avoid detection. It headed along the shore of the southern edge of Ember Island and crossed the channel to the mainland, on the upper arch's tip, then pulled into a partially submerged wharf built of dark stone, the same color as the beach sand, with staircases leading down either side and extending below the surface of the water, like the structure was slowly sinking on crumbling foundations. They held back and watched as a passenger deboarded and strode down the pathway.

#

They left Appa with Aang still in saddle at a hill to the side of the area, then crept down through a dark jungle with dense undergrowth of ferns and vine to follow after Zhao. Ahead was a crumbling, ruined temple of stone, built in an ancient style, which Zuko hadn't known existed. It had never been marked on maps nor mentioned to him. From the seachannel that the ferry and private yachts traversed it wouldn't have been visible, situated as it was behind a turn of the path and buried in overgrowth. Suki went ahead to scout the landlay and guided them to a side entrance they wouldn't be seen by. The four inched down a corridor in darkness. Ahead the hall opened to a primary nave surrounded by supporting columns and arches lofting up the vaulted roof. A single glass lantern, its side broken and distorting the firelight, illuminated a bench which had been dragged to the center. His father was seated there, leaning to the side like he was having difficulty from an injury, and his voice was pained and aggravated as he spoke. Zhao knelt before him to give a report. The latter seemed well and his voice was strained but level.

"My ship was the only one to escape. The sea was blocked to the south and north, but we crossed to a river which was unpatrolled and progressed without being seen. I believe we are the only surviving vessel."

"I issued you a hundred and twenty-five ships, the entirety of the navy was under your command, I provisioned all the munitions you could have wanted. The North didn't know we intended to strike, and the scouts confirmed they had no more than forty ships at hand, half of those unarmed fishing vessels. Explain yourself, Zhao."

"The other nations were there, the Earth Kingdom and another division of the Water forces pinned us to the south. We were flanked to both sides."

"That's not possible. They didn't know we were planning to launch an attack, and it would have taken the Earth Kingdom navy weeks to make the trip across."

"I don't know why they were there, but they came up on our rear while we were engaged with the Northern forces."

"I set you up in the perfect position to attack Agna Qel'a. They were under the impression we had no intention to attack, that we'd already occupied ourselves at Gao Ling. Even the astounding coincidence of the Earth forces' arrival aside, you should have still outnumbered and outpowered them by an enormous margin. I hadn't promoted you because I thought you an incompetent."

"We walked into an ambush, they knew exactly what our plans were and had prepared. They even had firebenders on hand to counter our attacks."

Ozai hurled something aside, which clanged against the stone floor at a loud volume that punctured the quiet atmosphere of the temple's interior. "That isn't possible! You mean to sit there and lie to me about the circumstances?"

"They had firebenders working with the Northerners, I saw them myself."

"We do not have traitors within the Fire Nation!"

"With respect, my Firelord, we do. Perhaps your son was with them?"

"I've just had the privilege of greeting my repulsive coward of a son two days ago. He was certainly not at the North Pole. You sit there and lie to cover your own failure and feed me preposterous excuses? You yourself are the one who begged me for this opportunity and assured me you could accomplish it, Zhao!"

"It's no lie, they had firebenders."

"Enough! I'm stripping you of everything I've given you. Your title is revoked and you are expelled from the military. Get out."

"My Firelord, you can't, I've done everything you wanted," he said, astonished at the sudden turn of his fortunes. "I need this."

"Turn your ship's command over to your lieutenant and get out of my sight, Zhao, before I teach you the way I did Zuko about showing your Firelord proper respect." Zuko, watching his father brag about the event, clenched his teeth.

Zhao stood up and stumbled backwards, reeling from the sentence. "I've given you my full loyalty."

A band of fire expanded outwards, the sudden light making them, from their watching-place, flinch. Zhao stepped back and waved a hand in front of himself, extinguishing the flames before they struck across his body, and continued gesturing to Ozai wildly, his voice growing passionate and obstinate, "You're the one who set me up for failure. They knew we were coming, they had a trap planned for us to waltz into unawares. While we were dealing with the Northerners the Earth navy cut into our backs without warning."

Through with discourse and enraged, Ozai stood from the bench and began an assault against him one-armed and limping. Zhao fended the flames off, still uncertain, until one firebolt took him in the shoulder and he screamed. In a reversal of his previous attempts at placation, he abandoned his inhibition and returned with his own firebending. The two kicked off into a fierce exchange, Zhao screaming in rage and Ozai hindered and struggling from the injuries he must have won in his fight against Aang. The imbalance of power was immediately apparent. Ozai, who had begun the hostility, was too injured to see it through, and the commander had lost control of himself and was moving thoughtlessly by his temper, which flared from indignity. Ozai kicked forward, lost his balance through his weakened state, and could not block the next wave of assault. Zhao cursed as he brought forth the next movement, and a wellspring of fire impacted him. Ozai hurtled backwards and crashed through heavy furnishings into the stone wall at the rear of the nave. Unwilling to stop there, Zhao continued as his opponent was grounded and expressed every drop of his persecution and grievance against him.

Zuko, unable to watch any longer, stood up and shouted, "Zhao!"

Caught out of his composure in the midst of the act, he paused, then glanced towards him, dropping his arms to his sides. "Well, I guess he was correct about one thing. Prince Zuko, what brings you here?"

His father's body spread lifeless on the stone floor. He pulled his gaze from it and strode to Zhao. "We have something to settle between us. You rigged my ship with explosives. You tried to kill me."

The man laughed and raised his arms in a gesture of what, if not for his facial expression, could have been interpreted as lighthearted indifference. "Is that it? You've just witnessed the murder of your own father. Won't you accuse me of regicide as well?"

"He has nothing to do with me anymore. I challenge you to an Agni Kai."

"Are you sure about that, Prince Zuko? You don't seem in the best shape yourself."

"Get over here." Zuko walked out into the center with him and took a station the specified distance from the man.

He chuckled then replied, "Very well. I'm going to kill two members of the royal family today."

At the moment Zhao noticed the three clustered in the transept, Zuko, from his new perspective, saw two nurses in civilian costume who his father must have recruited from the town at Ember Island on his way over to the temple. They were watching the events horrified, and at their feet bandages and tins of medicine were abandoned, which they had been bringing in for his treatment. He turned from them and looked Zhao in the eyes. His shoulder was wounded, which put him on equal terms to Zuko, who had a variety of small injuries Katara hadn't had time to mend. Suki had thrown on bandages and salve she'd found in the house for the meantime, and it probably looked worse than it was from his perspective. At the moment the commander was unbuttoning his jacket to fling aside and readying himself. His expression still retained wild-eyed fervor despite his even-toned speech.

Zhao began saying something, perhaps wanting to get one more quip in, but Zuko led them off with a punch of flame towards his head followed, as the man staggered back, with a spinning kick along the ground which sent a line of fire running across the stone. Having barely swept the initial flame from his face, he leapt poorly and stumbled out of the way of the second. Zuko followed up with another puncture of flame. He slanted into side-steps to regain his center, then returned with his own attacks, which Zuko blocked with his forearms and mirrored back to him.

They circled and exchanged a rapid series of side-dodges and punches like a boxing match, but when Zuko was in range he broke the pattern with a round kick and the flames stripped Zhao's arms from protecting his chest, giving Zuko a moment of opening to swipe a cut across them with the side of his hand wrapped in fire. Zhao stepped forward, grabbed his wrist, and pulled him hard. It tossed him to the ground. Zuko rolled through it and bounced to his feet. He had a split second to dodge the next strike, then another. He pushed through it and kicked forth a burst straight on. Zhao framed his hands extended before him to part it, then threw up his own with a sweeping upwards strike, which Zuko cast aside.

Zuko backed up and set a hand on the hilt of the dao. His opponent gave a cocky smile. "Already need to resort to using a weapon as a crutch? You always were a poor bender."

"Shut up." He pulled them out and took a stance. Heat was drawn from his core breath down through his arms, then extended outward from his body, and by wrapping this around the existing blade of the weapons he adopted a finer, more definitive control while taking on a concrete limitation. Zhao seemed to think it was in his favor and didn't further argue.

When they resumed, Zhao found that bouncing the dao aside was as simple as using a sheet of fire as a shield. The blades glanced off his blocks. Zuko recollected his training sessions with Piandao and his scuffles with the wheat-chewer, and he found himself more at ease with the adopted forms for swordsmanship than the royal firebending style. By contrast this was restful. Instead of shooting and discarding, then regenerating and repeating the procedure, he could conserve a limited amount of fire, much like the waterbenders did their reservoir of their element. Without needing to constantly breathe out his energy and refill his bodyheat after it was expended on a single attack, using the fire-blade style was conservative, and he found surer footing.

The commander was accomplished and had decades of experience, but he was not without weakpoints, and Zuko had gambled his strategy on the exploitation of them. This was the student of Jeong Jeong. However, compared to what scene Zuko had witnessed at the naval battle, Zhao, despite proclaiming himself to have exceeded his own teacher, produced nothing on that level. He was focused entirely on wide, grandiose emissions of flame, as if he were so elated to show off and so sure of his own endurance that he did not spare thought to focus the attacks to where they would certainly impact Zuko, but rather on gaining peak showmanship and visual fulfilment. Zuko was battered side to side blocking them. It was the genuine article; they were not weaked in order to gain breadth, but were uniformly intense and solid, leaving no thin point to break through. With the wide coverage simple dodges were not possible, and he had to slice through to keep his footing.

Jeong Jeong had not generated a single flame at the battle. Instead, he had focused his efforts entirely on suppression of enemy fire. Zhao had never been able to see the greatness in such a feat, nor how it translated in terms of relative skill, because his principle in combat was direct attacks without ploy. While gambits were looked down upon as superfluous distraction in the military style of combat, Zuko had the sentiment that disparaging all nuance was the more childish outlook of the two.

With his broadswords he swept defence around himself simultaneous to piercing forwards. The style was fluid and flexible, and could achieve two objectives at once, though his attacks lacked the same intensity as the concentrated fire used by the commander. Zuko moved past a blockade of fire and slashed across Zhao's abdomen at a close distance, a near hit. Zhao whirled around and kicked the swords from his hands at the moment they were synchronized, ripping them from his grasp, and the metal rang against the stone floor. Zuko, not missing a beat, continued as if he retained the swords. Their physical presence had never mattered. His landed hit entered at the commander's already injured shoulder and sliced a diagonal across to his opposite hip. In reflex Zhao threw him off with a short, concentrated burst at near range to himself.

Zuko ducked backwards one step, pivoted, and turned the momentum through his hip with a wide kick, kept his grounding, and turned. In the same wave of movement he rolled forward, anticipating that Zhao would have taken distance to get out of range, and Zuko was again in close quarters and unable to be thrown off. He slipped his leg behind the commander's and lunged, taking him down from his inner knee being buckled with force, and Zhao crashed to the floor. Zuko threw himself to his body, slammed him over, and wrested his hand behind his back in a hold. His other fist he held flame-wrapped at the nape of his neck. They were both heavy-breathed from the exertion.

Zuko's weight was atop him and the grasp on his hand was firm, twisted around to try his wrist towards breaking upon any resistance. The broadswords lay discarded across the room where they had landed. "This fight is over."

"It's not. Finish it. Do it!"

"No." He continued pressing the man to the floor helpless and nodded Suki to bring secures to tie him up. She had a chained-metal pair of handcuffs, something the Kyoshi Warriors had fashioned in the like of those used by the Earth Kingdom, specifically to use against firebenders. "You see, Zhao, I had a great idea in mind. My sister is rotting in a cell in Ba Sing Se, and it seems a nice parallel that you will end your days in a cell in Caldera City's prison."

"How is our banished little prince going to get me there? They'll kill you as soon as you step foot on the harbor wharf."

"You really are an idiot. The Firelord is dead by your hand and I'm the rightful successor. I've avenged him by your capture and I've earned the throne dead to rights. There's my honor back."

"No one will believe you."

"We have two witnesses from the Fire Nation right over there." He nodded towards the pair of nurses, who had seen the entire altercation. "You lost more than an Agni Kai today."

"You conniving little bastard." He squirmed against the restraints as the rest of Zuko's friends came over. The nurses, meanwhile, inched out and peered with abhorrence at what the commander had done to the previous Firelord. Zuko paced to his father's body, found the golden ornament, and slipped it out from the singed hair and remains, while the ex-commander continued to berate him. "Regardless of the succession you remain a traitor to your country."

"You're the only traitor here. Now, tell me the details of that battle."

Sokka stood nearby, interested just as much as Zuko was. Katara took a quick glance at the charred body then ripped her gaze away with distaste. The commander didn't relent immediately, so the two young men took him by either shoulder and dragged him from the temple out to the bison, then threw him before the horns and vast jaws. He looked up wide-eyed with the look of a fox facing a dragon. Appa emitted a roar, which flipped even Zuko's stomach.

Motion stirred in the saddle, and the airbender sat up groggy and out of sorts. "Appa, buddy. What's wrong?"

"Aang!"

"Hey, Katara, Suki. Sokka, Sifu." He looked to the ex-commander and followed, "Monkey. Where is the Firelord?"

Zuko replied, "He's not a problem anymore. This idiot finished what you started on him." He stepped onto Zhao's upper back and pressed his weight down, grinding the commander's face into the dirt. "You see that monk? That's the Avatar. He's alive, and he's the one who rendered all that damage to my father. You'd best get the idea quickly about your current situation, Zhao." He dug his heel in and pressed.

"Alright, I'll tell you." They pulled him up to sitting so everyone could hear his voice clearly. Aang, meanwhile, had descended with Suki's help and took a seat on the ground between the women to listen. "We met the Northern fleet somewhere north of the Su Oku River Delta facing northeast. We were under the impression that either you had attempted an attack on the chieftain from within, or else that you had delivered the news of the offer to them, and they would think we would wait until you had finished your mission to make a move. The Firelord assured me there was no way they would be at ready to counter us, but there they were, lined up and waiting. We engaged because the odds seemed good for us regardless. Then we realized they had firebenders on their ships who could suppress our fire. It was Jeong Jeong at the front. I would recognize my own teacher anywhere, and that was his signature style of nonconfrontation. You would think the man was born to be an airbender and only landed here by mistake."

Aang nodded, agreeing that what he'd seen was something appealing to his own style preferences.

Zhao continued, "Not long after the battle's commencement, we were alerted of a pincer move orchestrated against us. The Earth Kingdom and a detachment of the Water Tribe came up from our rear as we were locked in battle. We couldn't break formation nor pivot in time to check them. There was something strange about that division of the Water Tribe. They weren't using bending, but they had weapons, underwater bombs. They used a ballista to lob them at us, and it didn't matter if they hit or missed, as the ones that entered the water exploded against our hulls anyway. The battle dragged on through nightfall. Not even Jeong Jeong could stop the artillery. Then, something shifted. It was like the sea itself was assisting them. In the darkness our ships began vanishing, one by one, soundlessly, with no apparent cause, like they had been dragged underneath the ocean's surface by some unnatural force. We would look over and find another of our allied vessels lost from sight. No one ever caught what happened to them so we couldn't figure out a counter. Meanwhile, that damned moon gave the waterbenders a boost in ability."

"We waited eagerly for the sunrise, knowing the tide of battle would shift back to our advantage. However, the morning was sunless in a heavy storm of wet snow and dense fog, with noises like thunder in the background. We couldn't tell if the sounds came from the weather or the battle. No one had predicted arrival of the storm. Both sides had already taken heavy casualties, but with the refutation of hope of the sun's boost to us, it was clear that the advantage would remain with the waterbenders. I set a course aside, through a gap, to the riverway for my vessel. The battle was already lost."

Zuko mused that his father's invitation had, indeed, been made under false pretense. His father intended to damn him no matter his choice. The two nurses, relieved of their previous duty and uncertain of what they should do, had followed after him and were waiting obediently for a command, recognizing him as their new power of authority.

He stood up and looked to the ship. From Sokka he borrowed a knife, and he took Zhao, who was still kneeling with his hands tied behind his back, and grasped his scalp. "Hold still or you'll get more than a trim." He pulled the knife through the man's topknot and the bundle of hair fell to the ground. Zhao saw it, then struggled in outrage. Zuko hit his temple with the back of the knife and returned it to Sokka. As the man was quieted, he grabbed the fallen topknot off the ground and held it. Sokka looked at him inquisitively. "We can't enter the Fire Nation on the bison. He'll be shot from the sky. However, there's a real nice ship right over there."

Suki kept guard of Zhao as they marched with him at their front, and Zuko walked beside the bison down towards the dock. In his own hair, which was finally long enough to tie up, was the golden flame, which was always bestowed upon the incoming Firelord. The ship did not fire upon them. He marched up the gangway and confronted the crew, who were largely injured and wanted to avoid a fight. Zuko extended the detached topknot. "My father is dead by Zhao's hand. I have two witnesses to the event, both Fire Nation citizens. I am commandeering this ship to return to my home." He looked back at the bison, waiting with the group and the two nurses on the dark basalt wharf. "Also, my friends are coming. Make room for the bison on the deck."

When Zuko returned to the capital city, his first step into the palace was made side by side with Aang.