AN: Finally! A new chapter! I'm so sorry to all of you who asked and asked and had to wait, and for those who were stuck at home and wanted an update to read and didn't get it, and for those who so very much wanted something - anything - to distract them from all that desperately important school work/test prep/job research that's been weighing you down. I hope this chapter is worth all that waiting!
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His father did not send for him that night, so Zuko did not sleep. He paced his suite - not the individual bedroom he had slept in as a child, but a lavish section of the palace set aside and devoted to the comfort of the crown prince and his family. The rooms had sat mostly empty for the better part of the past decade, but Zuko could not banish his awareness of who had resided here before him. Throughout the night he walked the sitting room and the bedrooms, the study and the tea room, and there was nowhere that he did not feel like an intruder. No matter how he paced, ghosts followed him.
When dawn finally cast the clouds in buttery gold light, Zuko stood in the small courtyard garden, glaring at a patch of cerulean sky. He did not look at the far end of the garden, at the closed panels of the apartment there. He had arranged it with Yotsu so that the garden would be his until night turned to full day. Then his doors would be shut and he could pretend that she was not over there at all.
But Katara pulsed at the back of his mind, sharper and more persistent than the ache of his slowly healing ribs. She shouldn't be here. She didn't belong in this world, his world. She'd been brought up mending and gutting fish like any peasant. When she'd been presented to the people, her bearing had not been that of a princess - she'd held her brother's hand like a scared girl. It was unlikely any of the roaring crowd below had been able to see, but Zuko had seen. The Fire Court would know, and they would pick her apart until there was nothing left.
When the softness of dawn faded away and the sun fiercely peeked over the roof's apex, Zuko summoned his attendants to close the hallway panels, then to see to beginning his day. The men blinked at the floor a little nervously upon arriving, but Yotsu set them to their tasks with quiet efficiency. Zuko stood in place like a mannequin as they replaced his sleep clothes with royal robes. He sat like stone as one man repaired the night's damage to his carefully-disguised hair, using more of the herbal-scented substance to flatten the stray hairs and reaffix the false topknot.
Here, appearances meant everything, and looking the part was only the beginning of what a proper prince must do.
"Yotsu," he said when it was done and the other attendants were filing from the suite, "what are my duties for the day?"
Yotsu blinked at the polished floor. "Your duties, Prince Zuko?"
"Surely, there's something I should… do."
"Yes, Your Highness, of course. I shall inquire with the household office at once."
Zuko watched him go, then began pacing the hallway. It was both long and wide, lined on one side by the panels that shut out the view of the garden, and on the other by the doorways that opened onto the master bedchamber, sitting room, and study. At either end the hall turned, leading to a small servants' dormitory and more rooms still. Zuko remained in the main stretch of hallway until he heard a distant scrape from the gardens, the sound of panels sliding open. He fled to the sitting room and was immediately assaulted by the smell of ginseng tea. Glaring at the breakfast tray awaiting him on the low table, he spun on his heel and made for the study.
He had hardly circled the large room when footsteps approached the second door, the public entrance, and Yotsu breathlessly announced the formally-robed men as they entered. "Prince Zuko - apologies - Chan Xu, Minister of the Royal Household, and Master Tak, Chief Librarian and Grand Tutor of the Heir Apparent."
Zuko received the bowing officials with a faint frown. Minister Chan Xu had a narrow face and a bureaucrat's oily smile, which he fixed on Zuko from the moment of his entrance. "Your Highness! Please forgive our abrupt arrival - we are honored indeed to stand in your presence. Tales of your victory have spread throughout the palace, regardless of the lengths to which I have gone to stifle gossip among the staff. Truly, your heroic exploits have captured the imagination of all of Caldera!"
Zuko's frown deepened, but he did no more to express his trepidation. "When I was last in the palace, the Agency of the Royal Household was headed by Minister Tenkai. Did he finally retire?"
"Sadly, no," Chan Xu said with surpassing sorrow. "I was appointed in Tenkai's place some years ago, after he voiced dissent against the Fire Lord's decree that the palace staff must be reduced."
"I see," Zuko said, though he lingered on his memory of the stiff-necked old minister with the kind eyes.
Chan Xu went on smiling. "As Minister of the Royal Household, it is my duty to assist the crown prince in choosing a housekeeper and under-servants who will attend to his inner sanctum. However, such tasks are tedious and beneath the notice of great personages. I would gladly select those servants best qualified, if it please your highness."
Zuko very nearly agreed and waved the man off, but then stopped. He could almost hear the unending hum of his old cruiser engine, the rasp of a familiar voice. He could almost smell jasmine.
Just because we are at sea doesn't mean we shouldn't live comfortably. All we need is one majordomo - to organize the staff! Such a person - of the proper temperament of course - would prove invaluable to morale.
Uncle, this isn't a pleasure cruise! The ship is fully crewed and we can't afford every frivolous thing that occurs to you.
Zuko shut his eyes against the rest of the memory and the roiling feeling in his gut, then looked back up at Chan Xu. "No. I can spare the time to choose my own staff. Gather candidates and I will sit in on the interviews this afternoon."
The minister's smile faltered, but only for an instant. "Yes, Prince Zuko. It will be done as you say."
Chan Xu bowed and backed out of Zuko's presence, and the Chief Librarian immediately stepped forward in his place. He was a much older man, bent and shriveled with no hair left on his scalp, but a well-tended beard accentuating his jaw with three white points. Zuko, who had not remembered him at once, now had to wrestle back the urge to fidget.
"Master Tak - congratulations on your new title."
"It is hardly new, Your Highness," Master Tak rumbled. "Up until the reign of Fire Lord Sozin, the royal family always employed a Grand Tutor. The founding of the Fire Academies and subsequent advances in our nation's education system resulted in a declining need for specialized tutelage for the royal family, but doubtless your lessons have been neglected these past years and no generalized curriculum can be expected to repair such a cavity in a standard education, much less that required by the crown prince. The Fire Lord wisely resurrected the customary post of the Grand Tutor at the urging of the Minister of Ceremonies, who then selected me for the task."
"Yes," Zuko said. He very nearly managed to sound stern rather than overwhelmed. "That's all- very interesting."
"Indeed, then we are in agreement," Master Tak said with the stiff earnestness of a man whose scope of interest did not encompass the unspoken feelings of others. He scanned Zuko as if seeing him anew. "It seems you have matured much in your voyages, Prince Zuko. I dare say you will find your upcoming visits to the Royal Library far more enlightening than those of your… less scrupulous years."
Once again, Zuko froze under the old librarian's eyes, just as he had years ago in a narrow aisle between towering bookshelves, gripping the hilt of his knife where Azula had lodged it in the spine of some ancient tome before running off.
Presently, he felt his face wash with heat. Master Tak was oblivious but over his head, Zuko could see Chan Xu making some quiet arrangements with Yotsu. His sharp eyes flicked for an instant back to Zuko, but an instant was all it took for the truth to become clear.
The choice to appoint this particular librarian as Grand Tutor was no accident. It was a test. The Fire Lord's ministers meant to evaluate Zuko, to see that exile had truly changed him. To be sure that hardship had truly beaten the weakness out of him.
His hands closed into fists at his sides.
"I can't wait," he said to Master Tak. "In fact, let's begin today. Right now."
The old man did not smile, but his eyes widened and caught the light. "Yes, Prince Zuko. Allow me to pull the appropriate tomes and prepare a space in the Royal Library. All shall be ready in moments, Your Highness!"
He bowed stiffly and scuttled from the room, but Zuko only watched the minister. Chan Xu had finished with Yotsu and stood now with his hands folded into his sleeves. His brow was etched with a well-crafted furrow.
"Forgive my boldness in saying so, Prince Zuko, but I worry that Your Highness takes on too much. Even the Fire Lord leaves lesser matters in the hands of his ministers. You have only just returned and must be weary from your long travels. A day of rest could-"
"I don't need rest." Zuko said, quiet and sharp. Chan Xu's expression did not change, but his skinny throat bobbed. "And I don't need my father's ministers to make my decisions for me." He stalked across the room and glared down his nose. The other man, already half a head shorter, seemed to shrink smaller still. "Do not think that you can overstep the bounds of propriety with me, Chan Xu. You won't like the consequences."
"Yes, Prince Zuko! I wouldn't dare!" Chan Xu dropped his head into a deep bow.
Zuko frowned down at the top of his hat of office. He might have expected some sense of triumph in this moment, but there was only the same sickening weight he had felt since he had looked out on the faces of his people. "Send for me when you have arranged the interviews. You know where I'll be."
And with that, he marched from his study to meet the old librarian, the minister's eyes burning on his back long after he had moved out of sight.
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Katara knelt in the shade of the upraised walkway, watching little brown birds bathe in the dust on the opposite end of the small courtyard. The garden itself was lush - and artfully arranged with a few large, smooth stones gathered in the shade of a small tree - but there was a spot beneath the far wall where the earth did not hold water. There, the little birds congregated, taking a moment to ruffle their feathers in the dirt.
"Forgive me, Princess Katara," Sian said as she settled a legged tea tray at Katara's side and poured carefully, "but you have hardly spoken this morning. Are you feeling unwell?"
Katara glanced at Sian's bowed head and couldn't suppress the despairing breath that leaked out of her. Her throat was sore, her voice hoarse. "If I were you, I think I'd be pretty sick of hearing me speak by now."
All of the previous day, and most of the two nights she had spent here, Katara had not stopped demanding answers. She had not stopped prowling the apartment to which she was confined until exhaustion took her where she sat. Even then, no sooner had she shut her eyes than she saw Sokka once more, fading to a shadow as the guards walked him into the wall of flame. She had heard his voice and jolted upright so suddenly that Sian dropped the teapot she had been clearing away, splattering cold tea and porcelain across the sitting room floor. Katara had barely noticed.
Where is my brother? Where are my friends?
No one would tell her. Sian had earnestly confessed her own ignorance more than once. The palace maids who came and went from the apartment stared at the floor with wide eyes and shook their heads desperately. Roshu had only glared at a distant point and informed her that he would be in the antechamber, within easy hearing range should she get any ideas about causing trouble.
Presently, he sat at the far end of the walkway, just inside the door that led out to the maze of the palace. Katara had been successfully ignoring him all morning - he was about as unobtrusive as an armored gargoyle - but she had not failed to notice that Sian had taken him a cup of tea.
The maid pressed her hands together in her lap, peering down at the tray with a crease in her normally smooth brow. "Princess," she whispered, "I could never tire of your-"
"Just," Katara said, stiffening against the increasingly familiar feeling of being fawned over, "don't worry about it, okay?"
"Alright," Sian said faintly. She was silent for a moment, then jerked as if remembering. "Princess, I did overhear some news in the kitchen. Ginji was complaining about the young lady she serves. I think she must have been speaking of your friend, Miss Bei Fong - which means that she is still somewhere in the palace."
The slight bow that Li and Lo had cultivated in Katara's spine snapped out. With a surreptitious glance at Roshu - who was also evidently watching the birds - she bent closer to Sian. "Where would she be?"
"I- Princess, I could not know such a thing!" Sian's eyes darted to one side and the furrow deepened in her brow. "But… I would suppose that she might be in the guest wing. Certainly, it would not be proper for the scion of a noble house to be held in the cells."
Roshu cast a suspicious glance their way and Katara picked up her teacup and straightened, looking serenely out on the garden once more. The porcelain was too hot for her fingers, but she ignored the soft burn. A thread of worry drew tight in her chest as the implications sank in; if Toph had been here in the palace for two nights now and had not managed to sneak out even to see Katara, something was wrong.
Katara let her eyes climb up the red-painted wood of the wall across the garden. Yes, something was very wrong.
Toph was the key to everyone else's escape. If she was unable to leave her room in the guest wing - if that was where she was - there was no chance she was going to be able to free Sokka and Aang. She needed help, at least to get started getting the others to safety. Katara watched the birds and began forming a plan.
"Princess," Sian said faintly. Katara looked back at her just in time to catch her in the instant before she dropped her eyes. Sian stared at her own knee as if watching it transform into a viper. "Please… I am certain your friend is comfortable. Please don't-"
Suddenly, the door to the antechamber snapped open. Katara leapt to her feet, easily falling into a bending stance in the loose silken clothing Sian had brought her, but immediately felt silly. A tall, thin woman entered, followed by a half-dozen maids, one of whom was taking notes.
"…for new paper for the walls in the companion suite at the very least. From the look of things, it's no surprise these rooms have been unused for over half a century."
Katara watched the maids cluster together to look at a corner near the ceiling where the paper had peeled away from the wall and felt oddly defensive of her latest prison. To her, it was the nicest place she had been kept since her capture - in particular the garden, where she could look up at the sky - and she found the wooden floors and sitting mats oddly comforting, almost familiar in their similarity to Water Tribe huts. Now a stranger had come and was threatening to change this new place, without so much as glancing at Katara herself.
"Excuse me," Katara said with a forced smile. The thin woman stopped extolling on the sins of the aging decor long enough to cast a guarded look at her. Katara put a little more friendliness in her smile. "I don't think we've met. I'm Katara. Who are you?"
The woman's expression only hardened. "A slave is in no position to speak to a majordomo."
A block of ice dropped into Katara's stomach and her smile eroded away. "Well I'm speaking to you now."
Something tugged at her sleeve and Katara glanced down enough to see Sian peering pleadingly up at her. She dropped her eyes at once and shook her head vigorously.
"As majordomo of the household of the crown prince," the thin woman began, her tone sharp and lofty, "it is my duty to ensure that His Highness finds only pleasant energy in his quarters. An insubordinate slave creates tension and strife. Such a slave cannot be allowed to remain in His Highness's inner sanctum without correction."
Katara curled her lip but was cut off by the rustle and thump of Sian throwing herself onto hands and knees beside her. "Please Mistress Pokui! The Princess is only-"
"A slave." The thin woman, Pokui, pressed her lips into a hard line. "And a slave must know her place. As must a servant. You are dismissed, girl. Go down to the vats and see if that fat old toad has need of a new laundress. If she does not, you shall have to seek employment outside the palace."
Sian stared straight ahead, her expression shattered. Katara whirled back on Pokui. "You can't do that!"
A thin eyebrow arched and her face did not otherwise move. "His Highness selected me over a dozen applicants for the post of majordomo, vesting in me the authority to dismiss and install staff in whatever way I see fit to protect the tranquility of these chambers. As such, I will see you attended by maids who do not incite your more barbaric tendencies."
Katara bristled, but was distracted from spitting back a retort when Sian rose meekly from her knees and made for the door. Startled, Katara took a step after her. "Sian!"
The maid hurried past the intruders, her head bowed, but paused in the doorway to look back at Katara. Her cheeks were flushed an angry red and tears threatened to spill from her eyes. Sian took one final look at Katara and, without a word, hurried from the room.
Katara stared after her, then glowered at Pokui. "Nice. What's next? Are you and your cronies gonna steal my lunch money?"
The majordomo scoffed faintly. "As if you have more than skins and rudimentary tools to your name. No, as I said before, your behavior shall be corrected."
"Corrected?" Katara raised an eyebrow and unthinkingly settled into a fighting stance. Beyond the cluster of maids, she caught a hint of movement as Roshu stiffened, but she ignored him. "I don't know if you've heard, but there is only one person who gets to give me commands. I want to hear what he has to say about this."
The maids gasped. Pokui only blinked. The change that came over her face was like a thin skin of ice forming over still water, swift and difficult to identify.
"You are foreign and uneducated, so I shall permit you this mistake, this once. A slave does not make demands of a head servant, and certainly not of her master. Prince Zuko will come to you in his own time if it pleases him. Until then, as his majordomo, I act with his authority." Her tight lips twitched faintly. "If you defy me, you effectively defy His Highness, breaking your oath of service. Now, either behave as you were trained - or lash out in some foolish fit of barbaric pride and I shall instruct you in a way that will better sink in."
Katara scowled, her heart pounding as she tried to decide whether Pokui was telling the truth. Li and Lo had told her that she outranked most servants, but that meant maids and footmen - not the majordomo. Still, yielding to this woman felt like a trap, like Zuko had put Pokui in place to keep Katara in line without having to dirty his own hands.
She gritted her teeth. Fine. He was so worried about her behavior, she would behave. For now.
Katara relaxed from her bending stance and assumed the relaxed submissive pose of a slave. It felt like shrugging into a parka full of ants. "Mistress Pokui."
Pokui raised her chin slightly, revealing the hard cords of her throat. "Good. Now, I will return to my work and you shall drink your tea. Your new maids will arrive shortly."
Katara bowed incrementally and knelt again beside the low tea table, once more facing the garden. Behind her, she could hear Pokui making notes on what she intended to change, what furniture was simply too worn to be kept, and what ought to be brought in to replace the unacceptable pieces. Her voice rasped at Katara's nerves subtly, until a specific sentence leaked out of the bedroom.
"...however unlikely, we must not discount the rumors entirely. We must ensure that Prince Zuko, should it please him to visit this apartment, finds the decor especially accommodating as it is unlikely he will be received so by his slave…"
Katara glared across the garden at the little birds squawking and chasing one another through the low tree, then up and away into the open sky. Her eyes lingered on the panels on the far side of the garden wall, panels that looked enough like those in her own apartment that she could not help but know there was another set of rooms over there. She could not help knowing who lived there, just a stroll in the garden away.
Blood pounded through her face but she felt so cold. She knew - and so did the maids. So did everyone. She was a slave to Zuko's whims and everyone in the palace knew what he wanted, what she had given him. In the cup in her hand, the tea froze solid so fast the porcelain split against her palm with a grating crack.
"Don't cut yourself."
Katara did not look at Roshu, even as his boots thumped on the walkway with his slow approach. He stopped just outside arm's length and stood over her.
"Bleeding won't help your situation. Put down the cup."
"You must love this," Katara spat. "It's got to be so satisfying, after I embarrassed you back on the ship."
Roshu did not speak, but he let out a stiff breath as he took a knee beside her, clamped a hand around her wrist, and pried the broken cup from her fingers. Katara resisted, glaring at him now, but his hands were much stronger and he took the cup easily. He released her before dropping the shards of porcelain and ice on the tea tray. His face was stern as ever, lined and unblinking and devoid of any satisfaction, and it only made Katara feel small as he rose to return to his place by the door.
"Well, enjoy it while it lasts," she snapped at his back.
Roshu paused to look back at her with renewed suspicion and Katara, even though she had just dropped a hint at her intention to escape, felt a wash of reassurance. Whatever humiliations she had to endure, she was still powerful, still a force to be feared. She glared out past the silent garden, beating the panels of Zuko's apartment with her eyes.
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Zuko marched the corridors of the palace with the dignity befitting a prince despite the storm rumbling inside him, despite his overwhelming urge to run.
Three days had dragged past, punctuated only by matters of small importance. Lessons, staffing concerns - the sorts of things Zuko would have finished dealing with the year he turned seventeen, had he not been banished. For three days, like a child, he had spent the mornings sitting in the cavernous library with Master Tak, committing dry information to memory, from tax policy to the more boring parts of his ancestral history. For three afternoons, he had met with new maids and footmen, trying to suss out enough difference between their precise, refined postures to justify choosing some over others - experience he would already have had, had he grown up in these halls. Instead, like a child, he had to rely on Chan Xu to tell him the pertinent information.
And, like a child's, his heart had soared when the Fire Lord's attendant arrived. At last, Ozai had sent for him.
The feeling had been fleeting, though, however Zuko clung to it. With every step nearer to the throne room, he felt himself filling up with familiar fears. Anxieties chased one another through his head like a flock of cinder swifts circling the mouth of a volcano.
Attendants opened the doors to the throne room before him and he entered, for the first time in five years, to stride between the proud gilded pillars. Every step felt like an elevation, as if he was coming now to the peak of a mountain he had been climbing for all this time. At the base of the dais, he lowered himself to a full kowtow before the wall of flame.
And he waited.
The room was silent except for the rush and crackle, and the walls were lost to the darkness beyond the looming shapes of the pillars. Gold glowed out of the darkness like eyes. Beyond the fire was a shadow, and Zuko knew better than to raise his head and look before he was bade.
"Zuko," the Fire Lord said at last, his voice as dry as the air in the room. "Rise. Let me look at you."
Zuko rose to his feet and fixed his eyes on the shadow beyond the flames. He focused on forcing each breath through the choking crowd of words clogging his throat. The shadow rose, the gold crown flashing.
"You have grown much from the boy you were. When I sent you away, you were a cowering embarrassment. Now, after the hardships of your voyage, you have completed your mission. You have regained your honor, and you have grown into a man. A hero to your nation. A true prince."
The words shook Zuko like a heavy blow, but apart from the faint widening of his eyes, he did not move. "Thank you, Father."
Ozai emerged through the flames and began to slowly pace the wide dais, casting Zuko with looks he did not quite recognize, until he realized he had seen that expression on his father's face when he looked at Azula.
"Now that you have reclaimed your rightful place as my heir, there is much to be done. The war is near its climax and the people of our nation must not be allowed to falter before our armies put an end to the last resistance. You will play a key role in my strategy, Zuko."
Zuko's neck stretched and he seemed to grow taller in the subtle way of a plant straining for the sun. "I'm going to war?"
It was what all the great Fire Nation heros did. Iroh had won his nation's love with his victories as a general. If Zuko's father meant to send him to war, it was an honor and a triumph.
And yet even as Zuko reached out for the chance to fight for his country, he remembered the squad of soldiers he had seen slaughtered by freedom fighters. He remembered the boys in the rebel base, their struggle to prepare themselves in time. He tried to think 'enemy' as Palluk's face flashed through his mind, but it did not hold as it should have.
"No," Ozai said, a smile creasing his handsome face. "Our armies are led by competent generals and one doesn't switch out experience for youthful vigor in the final days of a war. No, my son, you will fight here, at home, to keep our people's eyes fixed on our great victory." He stopped directly before Zuko, looming like an altar before a supplicant as he went on.
"The city is restless. The common people of the Fire Nation have forgotten why we fight. They have forgotten what winning this war will mean for them. They have become weak and divided, riddled with nay-sayers and cowards." He curled his lip. "Terrorists. Even some among the nobles have become increasingly dissatisfied with our progress in the war. You will go before our people, one at a time if you must, and show them why winning the war still matters. Show them how our victories abroad bring honor on us all."
Sweat rolled down Zuko's spine and his mind raced, but he did not move. He thought of victory and pictured a heap of dead Water Tribe boys. The sick feeling in his gut only intensified.
It was stupid to feel this way. His father had honored him with this task. His father believed in his ability to keep the peace, trusted him to handle something of this importance. Zuko firmed his jaw and curled his fingers into fists at his sides. This was war, and he would not forget his place in it.
"Yes, Father," he said, a familiar glower settling on his face. "I will not fail."
"Excellent," Ozai said, smiling again. His eyes narrowed with cunning amusement. "Azula told me of your plans for your slave."
Zuko flinched and his face heated in a sudden, guilty wash, but Ozai went on as if he had not noticed.
"I'm impressed. When I first received reports of your involvement with the Water Tribe, I thought you might have followed in your uncle's footsteps into sentimental disgrace."
A bead of sweat dropped down Zuko's cheek and onto the shoulder of his formal tunic. He did not dare look away from the stare his father pinned him with.
"But no. You captured the princess to lure in the wily Southern Chieftain. Every indignity she suffers will make him more desperate to act. More foolish." Ozai's smile deepened into a sharp grin. "You calculated the military advantage to be greater than the damage to your reputation at court. A wise bid - unless it fails."
Zuko swallowed and unlocked his jaw. "It won't. Chief Hakoda will give up anything to save his children."
"I suppose you would know, having sailed with the man."
Zuko opened his mouth to agree, only to taste salt. For an instant, the wind was in his face again and Hakoda stood beside him, sturdy on the bucking deck. Unused to the rough sway of the smaller craft, Zuko stumbled. Hakoda shot out one hand and caught him by the shoulder, bracing him with a warm, callused grip.
"Now's not a good time for a swim, Prince Zuko," he laughed into the wind. "At this speed, even Katara would be hard pressed to fish you out."
It was a moment he had put from his mind for weeks, a feeling he had left behind in that trunk in the dark. Now, it returned to strike him hard in the chest. Zuko looked up at his own father, who was proud of him at last, but the pain did not abate. The sickness rolled over in his gut. His mouth twisted into a bitter frown.
"Hakoda is ruled by his heart. He's weak, and when he falls, he'll bring his people down with him."
Ozai's smile stretched, and Zuko did not truly notice it but the expression did nothing to warm his eyes. They gleamed, cold and hard as the gold affixed to the walls. "See that he does, my son."
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Katara peered at her reflection as the maids rustled and tidied away the remnants of their preparations behind her.
She looked like a joke. Her clothes were on the purple side of blue, cut in a style that didn't quite look familiar, with soft brown fur trim. The maids had dressed her in the stuffy tunic and pants and strangely puffy boots, then a seamstress had come in and made adjustments so that everything fit as snug as it could. They had even tied a slim fur choker above the steel of her collar and braided her hair with painted blue beads.
All this without even a hint as to what was going on. Katara had asked repeatedly, but the maids only gave vague answers. The most direct thing either of them had said was, "It is his highness's wish," which to Katara sounded a lot like the rattle of a pricklesnake. If she pressed too hard, she could be accused of not upholding her oath. The last thing she wanted to do after this miserable incarceration was make it all a waste of time.
Finally, an escort arrived and Katara, with Roshu a step behind her, was marched from the suite. The palace was as dizzyingly large as she remembered it, and she didn't recognize the door they took out to the broad paved exterior. Afternoon was sliding into evening and the entire space was filled with the orange light of sunset, casting long shadows across the paving stones. To Katara, it looked just as she imagined a desert would, hot and empty and tedious. A grumbled command from Roshu propelled her down the short, functional flight of stairs and into the small palanquin that waited there, just big enough for one. The bearers rose and bore her off through the city.
It was a struggle now to remember just how many days she had been in the palace, each the same as the one before, except for the increasing sense of urgency. Katara counted carefully as the tidy streets swept past. Six days. Tonight would be the seventh night she had slept there.
Not that sleep came easily. Katara woke often with nightmares chasing her, mostly about whatever terrible thing was happening to Sokka. If it was true that Zuko meant to send him away, there couldn't be much time left. Katara had to act, and soon. Every time she woke sweating in the night, she stared blindly at the ceiling above, her mind a sick whirl of failed plans.
At least, after the first couple of nighttime disturbances, the maids quit waking with her. In the day, they clung to Katara like scales on a fish - with about as much personality - but they soon took their prisoner-mistress's nightmares in stride and stopped rising when Katara sat up suddenly in bed. They even slept through her tip-toed explorations of the apartment as she searched night after night for a way out that had not been there before. Yet at night the panels were shut, and they were too loud to open even a crack without alerting Roshu. He, at least, seemed to sleep as fitfully as Katara herself.
At an intersection of streets, Katara watched a handful of girls about her age, each of them dressed in a school uniform. They paused in their conversation to watch the palanquin go by, though they couldn't have seen who rode in it through the swaying veil. The sight of them there, clutching their books and giggling excitedly, made Katara feel miles away from solid ground, adrift in the chaos of the life she had come to live. For a heartbeat, she wished it could be as simple as doing lessons and making friends.
But Sokka needed her help, and Aang and Toph did too. Katara wouldn't give up while her friends needed her. She would fight, and she would find a way to get them out of here.
The palanquin passed through a broad gate and left the massive buildings of the city behind. Katara blinked at the view opening up before her. A garden sprawled around her with rambling paths and artfully cultivated trees and clumps of grasses. Weather-washed stones sat together in clusters, strewn in flowering vines that did not entirely obscure but also served to enhance the buff texture of the rock. Even the faint breeze that found its way past the stifling veil bore a fresh scent of lush plants and earth. It was as if the tiny courtyard garden had been multiplied and lent a proportionate quantity of peace.
Katara gazed at the scenery until the palanquin bearers brought her over the rise and the setting sun glittered off a vast surface that stretched out before her. She blinked, trying to process what she was seeing.
"Is that a lake?"
Indeed, it was no mere ornamental pond. The lake sprawled in a natural depression, with reaching inlets and a network of walkways and bridges along the nearest bank. Life pressed in around the water's edge, lilly pads and reeds growing together in quiet shallows and birds rustling in the trees. On the trimmed grass of a broad lawn nearby, people moved about beneath three silky pavilions, the brilliant reds and golds of their fine clothing standing out in the fading light of day.
"Lake Pei Lu," Roshu said from where he walked beside the palanquin.
There was an edge to his voice, a threat he wasn't quite putting into words. Katara turned a sour look on him, but he still did not speak. She watched, unseen through the veil, as he swallowed and frowned at the pavilions as they neared. His eyes flashed back in her direction.
"You say you mean to honor your oath," he said with a faint curl of his lip. "We'll see soon enough what your word is worth."
Katara rolled her eyes but said nothing as a realization struck her. Six days following the voyage would be… She had felt it building this entire week as anxiety, rationally explained worry - but now, while the sun inched nearer to the horizon, the familiar exhilaration built to new heights. Had it been so long already? A little breathless with the surprise and the heat of her costume, she turned her wide eyes back to the lake.
As the sun set, the full moon would rise. The full moon was rising and Katara was being carried to a lake. If there was a moment to escape and free her friends, this was it. She stared at the glimmering water, unblinking despite how the dancing light stung her eyes.
