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1. Before the White Lotus, Piandao saw the Royal Family up close only twice.
It's a tidy way of thinking about things, and he likes it: before the White Lotus. It neatly divides his life into two uneven parts. The White Lotus has the larger, of course. He's fairly grateful for that. The Order changes the way you think, the way you look at yourself and the world. He knows that some of the others came to it rather later in their lives, and he can only imagine that the more life you had before, the harder it is to change. That's one of the reasons he respects Iroh as he does.
After the White Lotus, everything changed, and the way he thought about royalty, about rulers and the right to rule, and the people who did it? Easily the most altered. So it's a neat divide, before and after. And before, when the Royal Family felt somehow closer to sacred and so much better than any others, Piandao saw them twice.
He was presented, of course. That's what happens when you come out of nowhere, from a backcountry province, with no particular distinction to your name, and promptly demonstrate that you can beat anyone who holds a sword. Arrogance comes easily with youth and accomplishment, particularly when duels are not fought to the death, and he remembers that at the time he felt he would come apart between self-satisfaction and pride on the one hand, and awe and a certain amount of terror on the other. This was, after all, Fire Lord Azulon.
He was presented, after being extensively coached on how to approach, when to prostrate himself, when to stand up, and how to leave. He received some rather flattering words of congratulations. Then it was over. He was fêted later at his patron's house, because back then he'd needed a patron, but the presentation to the Fire Lord remained a brief, flitting moment and an image in his mind.
Azulon, at center; then-Crown Prince Iroh to his right, face drawn and closed, so soon after the death of his wife. Then-Prince Ozai to Azulon's left, and fire all around them. At the time, he'd held benders in a kind of awe, as well; really, any non-bender raised in the Fire Nation did, had to, with the constant litany of their prowess and magnificence and how they would spearhead the army to expanding civilization around the globe. And these three men, at the centre of constant flickering flames, and seemed terrible and distant as the stars. Piandao had been conscious of the honour, always, but he'd been happy enough to get out of there.
That was the first time.
The second time, Piandao was further away, though through sheer luck it happened to count as "up close" - the influence of a friend of a friend meant that he'd been in the front for Azulon's funeral, Ozai's coronation.
There always seem to be moments of great change, turning points, sudden and stark, in every life. He's old enough now to recognize that mostly, everything that leads to those points has been building for a great deal of time before, and it only feels sudden because of the way men and women look at the world. But that was one of those moments, and it still stands out in his mind: like everything had frozen, sudden and clear.
Piandao had heard a great many things, by the time he stood there, in the front rows of the watching city. He had a great many friends, some of them in high places, some of them in the sort of low place that those in high places begin to think are invisible. He'd heard about treason hushed up, murder; he knew that Iroh, Crown Prince and General, would not even know of his father's death yet.
And while there were reasons, maybe, that could be claimed to make Ozai's immediate coronation, beside the very body of his father and predecessor, reasonable, even necessary, it stuck in Piandao's mind like a splinter, and wouldn't let him be. Drove him, eventually, out of the capitol and out into the colonies and eventually beyond; drove him, really, to the White Lotus. Because the splinter was the thought that Ozai was a cancer, a disease, and something very, very bad indeed had just happened in Piandao's own country, that this man had come to the throne.
Later, of course, he learned that the cancer went a great deal further back, and that Ozai wasn't even the last, worst eruption. Piandao will never forget the look on Iroh's face as he spoke of his niece - everything that was there, and the blankness underneath it. She is all of the worst in my brother distilled, and let free without check, he had said. As Piandao always suspected that Iroh knew more about the worst of the Fire Lord than most, he'd taken that for the condemnation it was.
He'd seen the Royal Family up close twice, and each had been such a striking moment, but what he remembers now - what he can't stop thinking of now - is the absence of the Princess Ursa in both of them, and what, each time, that absence said. That in the first, she was too unimportant to be present; that in the second, everything had been made over her sacrifice.
Ursa, wife of a prince, mother of a Fire Lord, and granddaughter of an Avatar, has been the silent, invisible centre around which much has orbited.
2. Much still orbits around her, he thinks, but at least she is no longer invisible. Or, as it happens, unthanked.
The advantage of having two students was that one could pit them against one another and give one's joints a rest. Not, of course, that he would ever admit to joint ache in front of the children, but he wasn't getting any younger, and waking up with your knees refusing to move without lodging significant protest wasn't exactly something Piandao enjoyed.
Besides, their sparring was excellent for Sokka's form and Mai's overconfidence. Although if Sokka didn't learn not to gloat after a success, even among friends, he was going to end up regretting it. Piandao didn't mention anything, however. That, too, would be an excellent learning experience.
The smile that he feels briefly touch his face is a little bleak; his own old master's way of putting it had been it's never worth taunting someone you don't intend to kill.
"Boo-yah," Sokka erupts, as Mai hisses a curse when realizes she's stepped out of the circle - by less than an inch, and Piandao might have let it pass, but somewhat to his surprise, the Fire Lady-to-be is extremely, if not obsessively, honest about such things. "Sokka is on fire in the Fire Nation!"
"Not yet," Mai mutters in a dire voice, although it's a threat that might sound more impressive from a firebender.
Mai had not herself asked for training; that had been her husband-to-be, on her behalf, with only a little remaining awkwardness as he attempted to negotiate the space between between being Fire Lord, having been a relatively scruffy traveller showing up on the eve of battle, and remaining a young man with less than twenty years to his name who was very often utterly over his head. With, occasionally, an attempt to manage friendship in there as well. His betrothed, Fire Lord Zuko had explained, didn't ask for things. Ever. And wasn't very good at manners. ("In fact, if she's being polite to you, it's probably a bad sign," he had added, thoughtfully.) But would be overjoyed ("On the inside, anyway.") at the opportunity to learn yet another way to be extremely deadly with edged weapons.
Piandao did not bother to tell him that friends and acquaintances had been mentioning "the princess' friend, the little Lady Mai" as being any master's dream to instruct for many years now. They were right, as it happened. She is.
If more than slightly obsessed with perfection, and an extremely sore loser. Particularly when she loses to people she thinks are an insult to the entire art.
Piandao saw Princess Ursa step out from one of the doors and make her way across the ground when the children were still sparring; now she steps beside him and says, in part to him and in part to them, smiling, "If I may interrupt?"
Sokka flops down on the grass on his back. Mai shoots him a look of disgust and then turns her back on him.
"Of course, your highness," Piandao says, and steps aside to let her take the centre of attention. It has been some time since there was a Dowager Princess in the capitol; the last few generations of Fire Lords have been hard on wives. Piandao is curious as to how the political and court dynamics will work out.
Not, of course, that he plans to stay here that long.
"Your mother has arrived, dear," the princess says to her soon-to-be daughter-in-law.
Mai's eyes go hard immediately, but her voice is, for Mai, still neutral when she replies. "How wonderful. Did she enjoy her journey?"
The Princess Ursa's lips twitch slightly. "Apparently the rest-houses are not what they once were," she replies.
Mai closes her eyes, and says, flatly, "If you leave me alone in the same room with her, I will not be responsible for the consequences."
Sokka, demonstrating unusual wisdom, stays flat in the grass, looking up at the clouds and humming idly to himself, and says absolutely nothing. The princess' expression remains serene. "Duly noted," she says; her voice holds some humour. "However," she goes on, "it will be easier to . . ." She trails off, with a considering tone, and then concludes, "arrange for us all to have tea together first, if I can tell her that you are bathing, rather than here." There is a touch of apology, mostly to Piandao, but he merely inclines his head and waves that away.
He doesn't actually want to witness any mother-daughter explosions anywhere near his practice ring anyway. Even for him, even after the Order, there is such a thing as too much social intimacy with one's rulers.
"Right," Mai says. She is extremely careful to put her weapons away, and not at all careful when picking up the robe she'd discarded earlier and the fact that it would seriously wrinkle if she carried it crushed up like that in her hand. That, Piandao thinks, says most of what you need to know about her.
Sokka props himself up on his elbows. "Is her mother really that bad?"
Piandao spent time with the Northern Water Tribe, not the Southern; he's still not sure if Sokka's completely haphazard sense of decorum is a cultural thing, or just a facet of Sokka. Katara, he's quite certain, ignores certain protocols deliberately, and Bei-Fong Toph has deliberately and explicitly rejected every aspect of conduct she was ever forced to swallow, and the Avatar is - well. The Avatar.
Then there's Sokka.
The Dowager Princess sighs. "Lady Rina is . . .quite invested in her daughter's elegance, comportment, sense of dignity, and feminine accomplishment."
There is a long pause before Sokka says, " . . . .has she met Mai?" It's a rhetorical question and nobody answers him, but he adds, "That could make this whole wedding a bit tense, huh?"
Princess Ursa exchanges a look with Piandao, and neither of them say children. Perhaps because neither of them would be certain if they were speaking of Sokka, or of Mai and her mother.
3. Before the White Lotus, Piandao saw the Royal Family up close twice; now, especially sitting across a pai sho table from Iroh with a cup of tea at one hand, it seems utterly strange that he would ever have held them in awe. Respect, yes; for Iroh, for Zuko, for Princess Ursa, and for the young woman about to become Fire Lady officially instead of merely in fact, Piandao has nothing but profound respect. Fondness, in some cases. Particularly for his fellow White Lotus, who is about to lose this game. But awe?
One of the most useful things that the White Lotus teaches, Piandao thinks, is that people are people everywhere, and a peasant and a ruler are, in fact, worthy of equal reverence and respect.
There is, from far down the hall, the sound of something breaking and women's voices, raised. Piandao and Iroh both look up, and Iroh shakes his head. "I think the trouble is," he says, "that her mother has just realized that by this time the day after tomorrow, her daughter will completely outrank her, and she'll never be able to tell her what to do again. It's not that she doesn't love Mai, you understand," Iroh adds. "It's just that she's not very good at it."
"How will she and the Dowager Princess get along, do you think?" Piandao asks, because when you've known someone as long as they've known each other, and been through what they have, propriety is less important than one might think.
"I think my sister-in-law has a great deal of practice managing extremely volatile personalities," Iroh says, with no little irony. "Have I mentioned lately how grateful I am she was still there to find and bring back? For all my faith in my nephew, I would feel much less easy in my tea-shop in Ba Sing Se if she weren't here. And you, for that matter." Iroh takes hold of his teacup and, while he drinks, moves his tile.
It goes unspoken that, for all he treats it with placid joviality in public, Iroh's strict absence from the Fire Nation capitol - and thus from its politics - has less to do with his wanting a quite retirement, and a lot more to do with how badly his presence would undermine the perceived independence, and strength, of his nephew's reign. Piandao raises an eyebrow. "Your nephew isn't in much need of a sword-master."
"I thought you had given up trying to pretend you were nothing but a simple sword-hand," Iroh replies.
"Of course. I stopped being a simple one, and got extremely complex."
Iroh chuckles, then sobers. "I know you are homesick for your own walls, my friend, but stay a while longer. It is good for Zuko to have someone around who is an ally and a source of advice, but who isn't family, and hasn't witnessed that many of his misadventures. And it's probably a good thing for Mai to have a weaponsmaster for a while; it means there's someone who can talk common sense to her, even when she's armed."
Piandao doesn't answer immediately. He makes his own move instead, and then pours himself tea. Then he says, "You know, a number of years ago, I was very nearly convinced that the entire Fire Nation was so diseased in spirit that we'd never recover."
"It's good to be proved wrong sometimes," Iroh observes. The tea smells faintly of toasted rice, and Piandao smiles, slightly, and watches Iroh make the move that will lose him the game. For someone so good at tactics on the field, his strategy at pai sho can be somewhat lacking.
"That it is," Piandao replies.