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When it is finished, Ursa returns to her rooms. The silk curtains sigh in the night winds and the lamp lights flicker. Her own heartbeat pounds in her ears. She sits facing the door.
When Ozai finally joins her, Ursa leaps up. Words crowd her mouth: she is ready to comfort, to encourage, to be whatever he needs. But his face is shuttered and blank, giving her no place to begin. "My lord..." she tries.
"You may pack one bag," Ozai says, looking past her.
"A bag?"
"A bag," he hisses, and turns her roughly toward her dressing room.
"How -- how long will I be gone?"
He laughs, abrupt and humorless.
Oh. Oh. Her hands fumble over the objects on her dressing table. The wind must be a gale now, to sound such a roaring in her ears.
***
Again Ursa paces the circuit of her new accommodations. The bed, the low table and stool, the chamberpot behind its screen. The fireplace, the shelves with her few belongings, and back again to the bed.
It must have been a shepherd's hut once, half built, half carved out of the living rock, here in the stony hills where thin herds of wool-pigs graze. But clearly, she is not the hut's first prisoner; the bars on the windows are dull and weathered, though they still hold strong.
Two scarred and aging men attend her. She judges they are no soldiers. Uniforms can be removed, but strength and posture are harder to disguise. Their voices give her no clues, for they refuse to speak.
And so a week has passed: in silence and cold mountain air. In plain meals of rice and pickles and tea. And in the storm of grief and anger that she holds in as tightly as she can.
What has happened to her children?
She hears a key in the lock and she turns toward the wall of bars that hold her back from the door. The door opens. It is Ozai. At last! Ursa knows that her face is flushed. She has no words for the feelings that overwhelm her -- this man, so familiar, but made so strange by circumstance. However, she is ready for this, has planned her response.
When Ozai unlocks the inner door and joins her in her cell, she sinks to her knees and bows her head. "My husband."
"No," he says. Clearly, simply, his finger raised in remonstrance, as if correcting a child.
"I'm sorry? I don't understand." She looks up as he takes the seat at the table.
"Oh, Ursa, what am I to do with you? You are impure now. Impious. You sully the royal family. The proper course would be to execute you. However, there are... considerations."
Ursa scrambles to her feet. "Considerations? I should hope so! I am your loyal wife --"
But Ozai continues calmly, as if she had not spoken: "There may be those in the Fire Nation treacherous enough to question my ascent. It would be wise to retain you as living proof of my innocence."
Ursa moves to stand directly in front of him. His eyes look through her, fixed on some vista far beyond her prison. His face looks carved from marble. Her husband has always been a difficult man, angry and proud -- but vibrant and vital, too. The being seated before her is remote, inhuman. It is not him. Everything she had planned, the appeals to his love, to their years together, it all falls away. She cannot speak those words to this person. Instead, she demands, "Why would I attest to your innocence?"
"Because you have a son." And now his eyes lock on hers, and she gasps and falls back a step. There is no soul there anymore -- only fire. "You will remain here against my need, or your son will pay the price. You will confess your guilt if I command it, or your son will pay the price."
"He's your son, too," she says, faintly.
"I do not need him any longer."
His gaze is searing. His attention is as inhuman as his indifference. Ursa's anger at him wars with her horror at his transformation. Ozai looks her up and down with a strange smile, then reaches for her waist.
"No," she says, immediate, instinctive.
"No?" he replies. The smile edges toward a sneer.
Ursa stifles her feelings, and reminds herself that she is a queen. "Please, my lord," she says with a delicate curtsey, sketching the formal court gestures of supplication.
His hand moves so fast she scarcely sees it before it smashes her mouth, whips her head to the side. Blood spills hot from her torn lip.
"You're a traitor and a murderess," Ozai says. "You don't get to put on airs."
The fire in his eyes flares brighter. Ursa backs away from him, two steps, three. But then the bed is behind her, and there's nowhere else to go.
***
Sometimes Ursa prays for madness. Last night she came as close as she has ever come. And yet morning has come and she is entirely clear-minded, though her head aches from hours of rage and weeping. She opens her eyes and is disoriented for a moment, until she recognizes the underside of her bed frame. Last night she upended all her furniture and swept her shelves clean. And yet even then... she remembers holding a rough clay cup in her hand, arm raised to dash it to the floor... and then she set it down gently on the hearth.
Ursa laughs bitterly. She pulls her robe closer around herself and closes her eyes again. Perhaps she will spend the entire day here, on her displaced mattress on the floor.
Eventually the door opens. She can tell by the footsteps that it is one of her voiceless jailers, the taller one, come with her morning meal. For a year now, Ursa has followed the instructions that they mimed to her that first day: when they approach, she moves to the far corner of the hut. Then they enter, set down her food, and replace her chamberpot with a clean one.
Today Ursa ignores him. She lies resolutely still. He waits. She hears the faint rustle of clothing and rattle of dishes as he shifts his weight.
He waits.
Finally, with a snarl, Ursa rolls to her feet. The man looks surprisingly apologetic. She takes her position and he does his chores. Then, before leaving, he waves his arm around the room in what is clearly an offer to help.
Ursa considers it. But she veers between loneliness in one moment, and feeling his presence like sandpaper in the next. She shakes her head, and he leaves. She sits at the table he righted and mechanically spoons the rice porridge into her mouth. When she has eaten all that she can stomach, she returns to her true work.
Her son is her jailer; she kills him if she leaves. Ursa fears, or maybe hopes, that someday she will be willing to risk that. She is preparing herself, just in case.
Before, her bending was weak and pretty. She had been taught mere party tricks, clever little will-o'-the-wisps and sparkling serpents. Now, she breathes and breathes, feeling the heat circulate along all her meridians until a torch blossoms from her upturned palm. She breathes. Hotter. Hotter. Hotter.
***
"Everything can burn, you know. Fools stand and prate in my audience chamber, and I can hardly hear their words over the hissing of the fire trapped in their flesh. They never know how merciful I am, when I forbear to set the fire free."
Breathe in, breathe out. Ursa is aware of Ozai's pacing. She is aware of his hoarse ranting. She is also aware of the unending cycle of her own breath.
"I didn't ask for this destiny. The Fire Nation demanded my leadership. Fire itself cried out for a fit guardian."
She can keep her breathing slow and even for his entire visit. It may be the only thing that she is allowed to control, but it is everything.
Now Ozai is weeping, in breathy sobs. Ursa slowly lowers her head. If he catches her watching him in this state, he will strike her. Breathe in, breathe out. At least he rarely tries to bed her any longer. Is it common madness that has depressed his lust? Or has the fire burnt it all away?
***
When Ozai is not there, Ursa has another technique for testing her control.
She sees white bones in deep water. Breathe in, breathe out.
She sees a marble urn and tablet, with incense always burning. Breathe in, breathe out.
She sees blood made of her own blood, pooling red beneath a lifeless body. Breathe in, breathe out.
Hotter. Hotter. Hotter.
***
Ursa wakes one morning, and like the wild geese at the turn of the weather, she knows that it is time. Her mind is pure and focused.
She stands before the window, fire in her upturned palm. She brings the fire to the bars -- hotter -- until they glow and bend. She forces an opening and tumbles gracelessly through. The sparse grasses scratch at her ankles.
Sometimes she has wondered if her jailers would even try to stop her. Sometimes she has wondered what Ozai will do to them when she is gone. Today they are still abed, and there is no use in wonder. So Ursa passes like the cold wind down the mountain, a breath of emptiness.
***
While her kettle heats on the fire, Ursa sweeps the floor of the small shrine. She has grown fond of this one, and will be sad to move on when the season changes. But now, she reminds herself, the world has changed. I can stay here, if I choose.
She hears footsteps on the gravel path -- someone bringing her breakfast from the village at the base of the hill. She moves to the door to greet them, and stares in stunned silence as Iroh rounds the camellia bushes, carrying a covered rice bowl. He is at the temple doorstep before she finds her voice. "Iroh!"
"Good morning, my sister! I have brought you your breakfast."
Ursa's legs fold beneath her, putting her on the wide stone step. She gestures to the spot next to her, in what she hopes looks like welcome. Iroh reaches down and hands her the bowl, then says, "Do I hear the whistle of a kettle boiling?"
"Oh! Yes, in the back room."
"I will go make us some tea."
Ursa laughs to herself, and wipes at the tears that spring to her eyes. At the first village she came to after her escape, the villagers called her a holy woman. She took their suggestion and played the part. For years now she has traveled the hinterlands, blessing babies, casting fortunes, and tending to mountain shrines. She has sternly maintained her serenity; even Ozai's fall last year seemed only a ripple on the sea.
Now Iroh is here, and the ripple has become a wave crashing to shore.
He comes back with the tea service laid out on a tray. He takes the seat next to her and pours for two. Ursa says, "I really am glad to see you. I'm sorry I didn't say that before."
"Oh, no matter," he says, handing her a steaming cup. "My arrival was unexpected, I'm sure."
They sip the grassy tea in silence, until Iroh points to the bowl in her lap. "Say, are you going to eat that?"
She laughs. Beneath the lid she finds two tea-dyed turtle-duck eggs and a mound of pickled radish decorating the snowy rice. "I have extra dishes in my room," she says.
"I found them already," he laughs. He takes a bowl from the tray and scoops up a portion of the food.
After breakfast, he says, "I will tell no one of this visit, if that is what you wish."
"What I wish... oh, Iroh, how can I return? I killed him."
Iroh tilts his head.
"Zuko, I mean. Ozai told me that he would kill Zuko if I escaped. And then the day came that I was willing to escape, even so. In my heart, I killed him."
"I sent my son into battle," Iroh said. "I sent him into battle, and he died. But even if he hadn't... We all send our children into battle, on the day they are born. There is no safety in this world. But there is love. Do you still love him?"
"Always."
"Then come back with me."
In an instant, her heart is like water poured from a jar, rushing down the hill to the river valley and then on to the city by the sea. Iroh must see the decision on her face, and he laughs at her frustrated gestures.
"Dishes to wash? Clothing to pack?"
"Worse! The Chins' baby isn't due until tomorrow, and it's her first! I could be waiting another two weeks!"
They laugh again, together, joy welling up and overflowing, filling the empty places.