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Chapter Text

Spring was over and dead; now it was summertime in the Fire Nation.

Two bright sparks – a boy and a girl – ran very quickly through the levels of the royal barge. Underneath their small, quick feet, the vessel rumbled as it pulled away from Caldera’s docks and churned towards its destination: Ember Island, the site of the royal family’s midsummer holiday. The royal family had vacationed at Ember Island for centuries. It was tradition; they were big on tradition, the royal family.

But let’s focus our attention back on the two running sparks. At this moment they were darting, spark-like, through the golden stanchions, across the engine room, round the stanchions of the other side, then past the wheelhouse and the narrow opening of the staircases. They pushed past the captain, coming down, and the oarsmen and the servants holding silver salvers loaded with fruit, going up. 

Behind them they left a lot of destruction: one of the maids dropped her platter in surprise; one of the oarsmen tripped and nearly smashed his head in; the captain, steadier on his feet, didn’t fall over but he did shake his fist and swear – damn children! 

But he did this under his breath, of course. These were two very special sparks. They were young and fiery and quick. They were royalty. 

The sparks didn’t notice the trail of destruction they left behind them. And why should they notice? They had other things on their mind: it was summer, the time of sun-hot days of sand and leisure. Summer was good. Summer meant relief from their dull and regimented days at the Royal Fire Academy for Boys (for Spark Number One) and the Royal Fire Academy for Girls ( Spark Number Two). Goodbye homework, goodbye schoolmasters, goodbye the long, dreary days of firebending practice and copying lines and memorizing words from dead scholars and dead poets. They were all dead, dead, dead to the two sparks now. Goodbye, school! Hello, Ember Island! Hello, summer!

By now the sparks have worn themselves out, and they came to a panting stop against one of the barge’s golden railings. 

The boy and the girl were not too far apart in age. Standing side by side, they looked very identical. There were two identical topknots pinned and tied-off above two pairs of identical cheekbones; when the sea wind stirred, it swished through the silk fabric of two identical red-and-gold tunic, and stung two identical pairs of bright gold eyes squinting against the horizon. The colour was very warm and pretty, but the expression in them often gave people shivers. 

In case you haven’t guessed it by now, the reason the two looked so identical was because they were related. They were members of the same family: one was a prince, and the other was a princess. 

They really were very special indeed.

Take the girl for instance: she was a firebending prodigy. When she was born,  her parents had asked the Fire Sages to divine her fortune. The Sages told them that their daughter was going to become a powerful bender, that she was born tremendously lucky, that she was destined for great things, that she would accomplish a great feat that no one else in the family could hope to achieve. It was a big fortune, even by the bombastic standards of the Sages, but it said something about the girl that no one really doubted it. Look at her now: her face was as smooth and pretty as a doll’s, but behind it was a twisting and turning mind that moved as quickly as a unseen dagger in a dark alleyway. She was eight years old and already terrifying.

She was terrifying the flapping frog-gulls right now. She found an old almond cake in her pocket, broke off a few pieces, and threw them at the birds circling the barge. 

The boy turned around and sighed. 

“What’s the point of doing this?” he asked.“They’re not bothering you.”

“I wanted to see how good my aim is,” said the girl.

Her aim was very good. One piece of almond cake hit a gull in its wing. The bird gave a loud croak and tumbled down, startling its friends and making them all take flight. The sound of ribbiting cries and rustling wings swirled up in the air, and the girl laughed. 

The boy scoffed. “This is stupid. It’s stupid for a princess to be throwing things at animals. You’re almost nine – that’s too old to be acting like a little kid.”

The girl stuck her tongue out. “You can't tell me what to do.”

The boy gave a noble little sigh in return. He had a tender attitude towards animals and he did not like seeing them hurt. 

He grabbed the remains of the almond cake out of the girl’s hand and threw it overboard. “Now you have to stop.”

“Argh!”

The girl stamped her feet, but it was no use. That’s just what older male relatives were like in Fire Nation families, royal and non-royal alike: they think just because they were older, they could boss around whoever was younger and weaker and more female. It wasn’t fair. It simply wasn’t fair. 

The girl scowled and crossed her arms, but the boy ignored her. He was already looking away and about something else. Younger and weaker and more female relatives were not on his list of priorities.

This is a good time to focus on the boy: he was a good-looking child (though not as good-looking as the girl), and though he was approaching adulthood, he wasn’t quite there yet. He still had a child’s clear complexion, but stretched over the sharp jawline of a grown man. He had long, straight limbs and long, straight nose: these things gave him an air of resolution and authority, but something in his face made him look soft as well. It was his mouth. It was plush and pink and – as one giggling daughter of a noble lord once put it – looked like it was designed for kisses and poetry.

You’d think being handsome and royal would make him very happy, but he wasn’t. You see, when the boy was born thirteen years ago, the Fire Sages also foretold his future. They heated a turtle-duck shell, examined the cracks, and, shaking their heads solemnly, said that the boy had great tragedies awaiting him in his future. A tragedy at the hand of his own family.

(His mother had cried. She thought these inauspicious predictions cursed her son, and they did, but in the meantime they only added to his terrible charisma. When they found out – all the girls in the palace who were already in love with their handsome young prince – it only drove them to greater passions. They all agreed it made him even more interesting. The prince could hardly go anywhere or do anything without a group of them discreetly watching his every move, trying to divine what secret tragedy lied in store for him, trying to imagine what soft and tender passions could fall from those pink lips before he – “you know – oh, hush, we can’t say it out loud, that’s unlucky.”)

Everyone gossiped about the Mysterious and Great Tragedy: what shall it be? And who in his family would be responsible? His powerful father? His forgetful and forgettable mother? His grandfather, who was the Fire Lord? Or maybe (not likely) the small girl next to him now, the dagger-sharp prodigy? No one knew. 

– and the boy himself didn’t know. Most of the time he tried to not think about it very much, although as he grew bigger and bigger – his increasingly adult brain struggled with an increasingly adult thought: none of this would last. His future should be bright and wonderful, but instead, his Mysterious and Great Tragedy lay ahead of him and ruined it all, like a big ugly toad that crouched in the corner of every room, poisoning the air.

The boy’s brass-coloured eyes scanned the horizon without taking it in. The brief bubble of joy the boy had felt earlier over the summer and the vacation and the warmth of the sunlight over his dark head only made him more melancholy, considering that one day none of it would exist anymore, or at least, not for him. He was obsessed with his Tragedy -- he found it ribbiting.

The boy would have stayed there, brooding beautifully for a very long time, but he was interrupted by a woman calling out behind him.

“Azula? Azula! Where are you?

It was the girl’s mother. She came from below decks with a padded silk jacket in her hands.

“Azula! Come over now, you’re not dressed at all for the weather. It’s windy. I don’t want you to catch a chill.”

It was a bright and sunny day in the middle of summer; even with the sea wind whipping around the barge, the chances of Azula catching a chill were as minuscule as the rapidly disappearing dock behind them, now a brown dot on the horizon. But still – parents, even royal ones, followed their own bizarre logic. Azula’s mother held out the jacket and shook it.

The girl scowled, but she took the jacket anyway. 

...and then scrunched it up, set it on fire, and threw it overboard. 

Scraps of burning silk landed on the churning white foam of the barge’s wake. The jacket looked like something that was once alive, then died. It looked like the soggy remains of dead seabirds. 

Azula’s mother frowned but said nothing. What could she have said, anyways? Don’t do that? Azula would never listen. I was asking for your own good? Azula would  never believe it. 

“That was a really rude thing to do,” said the boy. “C’mon Azula, why did you have to ruin your own clothes.”

Azula scowled. “I don’t like it. It’s old.”

“It’s just a jacket, darling.”

“Zuko got a new jacket before we left.”

“Azula,” said her mother wearily. “We ordered that weeks ago. You only asked for a new one yesterday. The seamstresses can’t work that fast–”

“Ugh! You always loved Zuko more!”

“Calm down, Azula --” said the boy, at the same time that Azula’s mother said:

“No, darling, of course not, listen--” 

The girl stamped her feet.

“Ugh! You’re all driving me crazy! ” 

She ran towards the stairway and leapt down the steps to the below decks. In the water, the dead seabird jacket bobbed for the last time in the foam, then disappeared as well.

Azula’s mother took a deep breath through her nose. She turned to the spark who was still on the deck– our royal prince, our first and brightest spark, our Mysterious and Great Tragedy in waiting – and she nodded and said, “Well, Lu Ten, I’m sorry you have to see your cousin throwing a tantrum like that.”

The boy dipped his beautiful head. “It’s alright, Aunt Ursa.”

“I wish my own children were as good as you, you know. So well-behaved! You always do what you’re told, don’t you?”

“I was raised very well by my mother and father,” Lu Ten said modestly.

It was a good, appropriate answer. Nevertheless, it stabbed Azula’s mother in a small vulnerable place in her chest. Didn’t she also try to raise her kids well? Was she a bad mother?

A moment passed in rushing silence, where only the noise of the faraway gulls and snapping flaps could be heard. Then Azula’s mother cleared her throat and put on a pleasant expression on her face; it was almost convincing.

“Why don’t you come down to the lower levels with me, dear? Your cousin’s been sitting in his cabin all day; I think he’ll really appreciate it if you come over and play with him for a while. In fact, it’s getting so chilly now--” she made a loose, pushing gesture with her hands, as if she wanted to bundle up the entire world “--why don’t you go inside where it’s nice and warm?”

“Alright,” said Lu Ten. “I’ll go see what Zuko’s up to.”

Lu Ten wasn’t that fond of either of his cousins, but he was too noble to ignore a direct request from his aunt. She was right: he always did as he was told.  

He really was a wonderful child, our Spark Number One. 

***

So here they all were on the barge, the Fire Nation royal family on their Fire Nation royal vacation. Everyone there and accounted for: Mother, Father, Uncle, Aunt, Cousins – even Grandfather was coming along this year, though the Old Man was so boring to listen to that everyone was secretly glad he spent the entire barge ride in the lower decks, sequestered inside the biggest and grandest of royal cabins. Thank Agni for small mercies.

The Old Man (everyone called him the Old Man behind his back) didn’t notice how much the rest of the family didn’t notice him. All his attention was taken up by his newest acquisition, an iguana-parrot that a very rich duke had offered him in hopes of a favour. The animal had bright green spikes and a blue-and-orange striped tail and creepy, diamond-shaped pupils. The Old Man loved it.

People gave Grandfather a lot of presents, but the iguana-parrot was a special present even for special presents. It was special because it could talk. “Burn! ” it squawked periodically. “Burn it down!”

It could only say that one phrase, which the Old Man appreciated because he liked something that didn’t say much, and could never lie to him. He thought the rest of his family talked too much. They had too many words, and they used them like weapons. Everyone in the royal family was always lying. The Old Man appreciated that, unlike his family, the iguana-parrot could never betray him. 

He was the Fire Lord, which meant that he spends some of his time ruling a silly little nation and the rest of the time plotting how to continue ruling the silly little nation. Most of the time he paced around in dark rooms and thought about which one of his family was going to kill him first. Some days he thought it might be Lu Ten, out to get him before he got him (damn the Sages and their Mysterious and Great Tragedy!). Other days he thought it might be Lu Ten’s father, out early for the throne that would go to him anyways. And some days he thought it would be everyone: Iroh, Ozai, Lu Ten -- all of them (he naturally disregarded the females, of course). Everyone hated him, he was sure of it. 

The Old Man was vain, miserable, paranoid, and fearful. He was so afraid of death that he lived as though he was already dead. He spent the whole ride on the royal barge in his royal cabin, in the suffocating dark, with his squawking iguana-parrot for company like it was a living funeral offering.

“Burn it down! Burn it down!”  

“Good bird,” said the Old Man, and stretched out one bony, desiccated hand, and fed it a single melon seed.

***

Below the decks of the royal barge, the third spark sat alone on his bunk. 

He was not a very bright spark. He was neither very clever nor very good at firebending nor even very interesting, destiny-wise. When he was born, the Sages heated up the usual turtle-duck shell, but when the Head Sage leaned in to examine the pattern of cracks, the shell exploded. Oops.

…that was the third spark all over. He was always failing at things, even when they were things outside his control. Perhaps the turtle-duck shell was foretelling something obvious: everything was destined to blow up in his face. 

And no wonder: the third spark’s sister was a prodigy, but he was not; he was very slow, the opposite of a prodigy: everything came even more difficult to him than to the average child, so he had to work twice as hard as a normal child to catch up. He was always behind. He was a determined boy – he had determination by the bucketload – but because he didn’t live inside a bedtime story he found that hard work and determination was no match for raw genius and inbuilt talent. His younger sister was effortlessly better than him at everything. 

His whole life was a long chase. He tried and tried and tried, but he would never catch up. Never.

He had a lot of moody thoughts like that, this third spark. He was a moody child, prone to tantrums and fits of intense hysterics that nothing and no one could calm down from. In a nice bedtime story, being very bad at everything would have taught the hero a valuable lesson in humility, or possibly it would have made him sweeter and kinder and more considerate to other people who struggle in their own lives. But this isn’t a nice bedtime story. Growing up in the shadow of two other bright and wonderful children made the third spark become a difficult little twerp. 

He was being difficult now.

“Go away,” he yelled.

Lu Ten and Azula halted their fists from banging on his cabin door. “It’s us.”

“I know! So go away!”

“Open the door, Zuko.”

“No.”

“What’s wrong?” Lu Ten asked. “Whatever it is, you can tell me and Azula about it.”

Zuko, the third spark, sulked even harder. Lu Ten meant well, but he couldn’t help but be Lu Ten. So, he couldn’t help but be sensitive and noble and condescending. And besides, Zuko was in the middle of a jealousy fit. What was wrong was precisely what Lu Ten just said: me and Azula . Zuko and Lu Ten were closer in age; they were both boys; they ought to have more in common – so why, oh why, when they first got on the barge, did Lu Ten and Azula run off earlier and leave him behind? 

While Lu Ten and Azula were running around outside, Zuko was sulking over this question in his room. The more he sulked, the angrier he became. He was just about ready to blow.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he yelled through the door. “Go do whatever it was that you two were doing without me.”

Azula rolled her eyes.

Lu Ten shrugged and did as he was told. He meandered away and went back up to the deck and took up his brooding stance against the railing again, thinking about the Tragedy lying in wait for him in the future. 

Azula stayed behind. She knew her brother too well to take him seriously, ever. 

She waited a few minutes, and then gave a loud theatrical sniffle. “Zuko?”

Nothing.

She sniffled again. “Zuzu, open up, the worst thing just happened.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I was feeding the frog-gulls earlier, and one of them scratched my hand!” She thought about giving a few more delicate sobs, then decided not to over-do it. “Zuko, I think there’s blood coming out. I’m bleeding. Can you come out and take a look?”

The door wrenched open.

A pale face peered down at Azula. It was pinched and sallow and weak-chinned. Azula and Lu Ten had gold eyes, but these eyes were in a shade that only his mother called “gold” and that everyone else called “lizard piss”. The eyes blinked. The door opened an inch wider, and Zuko said, anxiously, “Show me your hand. How bad is it?”

Azula shouldered past him and flopped down on his bunk. She waved a perfect, unblemished hand in the air. “Tricked you.”

Zuko groaned. “What do you want, Azula?”

“Just to spend time with my brother.” 

“Get out.”

“No.”

“Get out!”

“No,” she said, and gave him a gap-toothed smile that someone who didn’t know Azula at all might have described as ‘winsome’. The left front tooth was missing; Azula had pulled it out herself. She always pulled out her own teeth the second she felt one wiggling loose. She did it because one, she liked to test her own very high limits for pain, and two, because nothing else disturbed her brother more than when she surprised him with a gap-toothed, winsome, blood-filled mouth. Now Zuko instinctively reeled back every time his sister smiled.

Azula smiled wider.

“I’m here to spend time with you because I want to tell you something. It’s a big secret. So you can’t tell any of the adults. Not even Mom.”

“What about Lu Ten?”

“Not Lu Ten either. Especially not Lu Ten.” 

“Fine.” 

Zuko also sat down on the bunk, intrigued despite himself. “Tell me.”

Azula gave a theatrical look around her to check that no one was listening. “It’s about dragons,” she whispered loudly. “There’s one on Ember Island.”

Zuko’s pinched mouth fell open. His yellow eyes went wide. “A dragon?”

“That’s right, Zuzu.”

“What dragon? What are you talking about?”

“I overheard your new firebending master talking to someone while we were still on the docks. One of the new maids. They were gossiping. They were talking about how  there’s a circus troupe on Ember Island. They’re there for the summer festivals, and one of the magicians says he has a baby dragon with him that he hatched from an egg. He’s charging people three copper pieces to take a look. It's secret stuff: he told her not to let anyone in the royal family know.”

“That’s crazy,” breathed Zuko. “No way.”

Azula shrugged. “How’s it crazy?”

“All the dragons are dead , Azula.”

“How do you know?”

“Uncle said so! He said he killed the last one and destroyed the last eggs as well!”

“So you know what this means? Our uncle was lying . He’s a big, fat liar .”

“No!” Two high spots of colour appeared on Zuko’s cheeks. He clenched his fists. “You’re the one who’s lying. He wouldn’t just -- make something up like that! He’s a prince! That’s not honourable!”

Azula rolled her eyes and flopped down backwards on the bunk. 

“Oh Zuko,” she said, not unkindly. She sounded far older than her eight years. “You need to learn that you can’t trust anyone in this family. We all lie. It’s what we do.”

***

Down the hall from the two children, a bird was squawking in its dark cage. “Burn it! Burn it down!”

“Hush, hush,” murmured the Old Man, and stroked its spiky green head.

“Burn it down! ”

***

Above the decks where it’s lighter and airier, shielded from the sea breeze by silk screens and gauzy curtains, other members of the royal family sat down for tea. The conversation was not riveting.

“How are the red bean cakes?”

“Lovely. And have you tried the chilled jelly cubes? Here’s one with fruit on it.”

“How nice.”

(A third voice) “Indeed: nice.”

“And the tea?”

“Fragrant as always.”

“Is that so?”

“Oh yes.”

(And now a fourth) “How nice.”

“How nice.”

“Lovely.”

“Lovely.”

“Yes, how very -- lovely.”

The conversation tapered off in a genteel silence. 

Zuko and Azula’s mother scratched the back of her powdered neck. She wasn’t just Zuko-and-Azula’s-mother though, she was a person in her own right, and she had a name, though one she wasn’t very attached to. It was Ursa. Later in life she would make a deal with a spirit to change her face and forget that name, and then she would go by Noriko. She was an actress that way: she was always changing roles. Right now she was Ursa-who-would-become-Noriko, and her neck itched, and she felt sick. 

Maybe it was the sight of that burned-up dead seabird jacket earlier. Maybe it was Zuko’s little tantrum that he threw right before they left the palace, or the rocking motion of the boat, or just Azula in general. There was a vague depression gathering around the top of her head. It usually happened when she had to deal with her children for too long.

Here was a dark secret that Ursa-who-would-become-Noriko had that no one else knew, no one at all: she hated being a mother. She suspected that she was not very good at it. She thought that one day her children will grow up and see her as what she really was: an actress playing the role of their mother. And like a play, none of it was real. She wore the costumes and put on the voices and hit the right cues and the right time, but at night, after she got into bed next to husband, she would stare up at the ceiling and search inside herself and find -- nothing.

She tried hard to love them. She really did. She remembered the first time her son opened his eyes and looked up at her while he was nursing. She had looked down at her pink, fuzzy face and thought, here it comes. She braced herself for the spring of maternal feeling, but instead -- nothing. Deep inside her was a dark cave. A dried up river. A cold hearth with a note pinned to the mantelpiece: c heck if Azula’s new jacket got here yet remember to speak to Zuko’s tutor make sure the servants packed their beach things correctly Azula would throw a fit if we brought her red bathing suit and not her black bathing suit and Zuko’s already so behind in his schoolwork and and and – and so forth and so forth. Lists and tasks. Duty instead of feeling. 

Was this all motherhood was? Was this how all mothers felt?

Ursa-who-would-become-Noriko wasn’t a bad mother, exactly, but the fear of being a bad mother lay inside of her like a secret decay. The fear rotted her from the inside out.

“Everything alright, darling?” asked her husband. She snapped her head back up. “You seem peaky.”

“Is it the tea? I told the kitchen to serve the White Dragon Bush, but I thought the leaves looked more like the White Jade Bush. The new tea master just cannot tell the difference.” Her brother-in-law shook his head. “Why did old Shu have to retire? Good help is impossible to get these days.”

“A good eye is really important for tea,” said her sister-in-law vaguely, and then, just in case it was too much of an opinion, added: “A lot of other things are important as well.”

“I’m fine,” said Ursa-who-would-become-Noriko. She looked around at her family, and then forced herself to be so.

“Have one of these wonderful little snacks,” said her husband.He said it in a way that suggested what he said wasn’t a suggestion, but an order. 

Ursa-who-would-become-Noriko looked down at the black, lacquered tray on the low table. There was a steamed cake on it. It didn’t look wonderful at all, actually. It was an intricately folded sheet of glutinous rice wrapped around some bean paste; some chef laboured for ages making it –- it was meant to resemble an unfurling pink flower. She thought it looked like a frozen mouth, caught silently in mid-scream. 

She ate it anyways.

“Lovely!” she said to her husband and her brother-in-law and her sister-in-law. “Just –- delicious.”

“How nice.”

“Oh yes. Lovely.”

The conversation went on.

***

“Anyways, remember not to tell the adults or the servants anything,” said Azula.

“Why?”

Azula sighed. “Because I want to go see for myself. And if Mom or the nannies know, they’d stop me.”

“You mean, you’re going to see the circus troupe?”

“I want to get proof that Uncle was lying to everyone.”

“He’s not--”

Azula flapped a hand. “Yes, yes, I know you think he’s not, but I do. So we’re going.”

“ We’re going?”

“Yeah, we’ll sneak out. It’ll be easy. The two of us -- we’ll go tomorrow after bedtime. I’ve planned it all out.”

“Azula, I really don’t think–“

“I’m going even if you’re too pig-chicken to. Pig-chicken, pig-chicken,” sang Azula. “Oink oink, Zuzu. Are you scared? Smells like chicken poop in here.” 

Zuko threw his hands up. His sister was impossible. “No!”

“Yes.”

“Fine! Go on your own then. Why do I care?”

They were both sitting on the rug with their back against the bunk. Azula slithered over on her hands and knees. She put her face very close to her brother’s.

“Really? You’ll let me, a girl, sneak off alone into town? Who knows what could happen to me? What if I get kidnapped? What if some crazy waterbender ch ains me up and leaves me to die alone out there? How would you feel if, the next day, you saw my dead body wash up on the beach? Because my brother abandoned me?” 

(Azula knew exactly how to manipulate others. She had a knack for reading people, and her brother was easier to read than most. )

Zuko groaned. “Fine. Fine! We’ll sneak out together, alright?”

“Hooray!”

“Are you happy now?”

Azula considered the question.“You know, I think I am. I’m happy. Out of everyone – I think I come the closest to being honestly, truly happy. I don’t know what’s wrong with you. Or Mom and Dad and Auntie and Uncle: you’re all so unhappy. Everyone I know. They’re all damp duds.” She burst out giggling.

‘Damp duds’ were fireworks that didn't explode because of a fault. Damp duds were bad; damp duds didn’t ignite; damp duds were the opposite of sparks. To call someone a “damp dud” was a Fire Nation child’s most devastating insult. 

Zuko curled up on his side and hugged one of the pillows. “But it won’t change anything.”

Azula stopped laughing. “Excuse me?”

 “Even if you knew that Uncle is lying and there’s still a dragon around, so what? No one’s gonna believe you. Uncle Iroh’s the crown prince. You’re just a girl. You’re not even grown-up yet.”

Her brother was a damp dud, but he could be surprisingly perceptive at times. He wasn’t bright and he wasn’t a good firebender, but every now and then he landed a blow that Azula had no defense for, and it burned. She gripped her brother’s hair and sent a little fireball -- nothing bigger than an ember, really -- shooting down to his scalp. He cried out, but she tightened her grip. “Take that back!”

“Ow!”

“Take that back!”

Her brother said nothing. Azula took it to mean yes . 

***

On the deck, the oncoming sea breeze whipped back Lu Ten’s hair and made it look beautifully tousled. A passing maid gave him an approving look. He didn’t notice. He was still thinking about Tragedies.

***

The barge docked. Ursa-who-would-become-Noriko came down with one of the nannies to fetch her children. On her way out the door, Azula smiled at her brother.

He flinched.

***

“Burn it down! Burn it down!”

Chapter Text

After the barge reached Ember Island, everyone got settled into the royal summer house. 

The next day, Azula and Lu Ten went off on their summer activities. There were waves to splash in, ball games to play, sweet coconut ices to eat –- but not for Zuko. Zuko had to stay behind to work on firebending with his new master. He was supposed to work all summer long to catch up to his sister and cousin.

He was doing this because he was dishonourably behind. The Royal Fire Academies had a very precise, very scientific system that dictated what level children should be according to their age: Zuko was ten years old, which meant that he should be at least on fifth-intermediate-novice, which meant that he should be able to conjure fireballs the size of cabbages and extinguish flames from twenty paces and recite the name of every firebending Avatar of the last five centuries. But alas, alas. Zuko’s fireballs were a little wonky; he was prone to tripping on his feet during exams; he was a complete dunderhead at remembering facts about anything. So in the spring, when Zuko was tested, he only scored a  fourth -intermediate-novice degree -- better than fourth-novice, but not as good as the fifth-intermediate-novice -- and his parents panicked. Oh Agni!  Their child was a moron! He was a damp dud!

When royalty panic, they really panic. That was why they hired The Carp. People said he was the best firebending teacher in the country. 

While Azula and Lu Ten went off and enjoyed the lovely weather and the shimmering sea crashing against the silvery beach, Zuko and his new master stayed behind in the royal courtyard, sweating and working.

“Assume your stance! Keep breathing!” barked The Carp.

Zuko steadied himself into his fighting stance. A trickle of sweat rolled down his nose and made a small dark circle where it dripped on the flagstone. Mid-morning rolled by, and the day was getting hotter. 

The Carp wasn’t sweating, because he was sitting in the leafy shade of a potted palm tree. He was a middle-aged man with a wild thatch of hair and a fierce frown that never let up. He looked grim, and he was grim. The Carp didn’t teach much. Most of the time he barked the same three sentences at Zuko over and over again: “Concentrate on breathing! Assume your stance! Focus on discipline!”

In the sun, Zuko concentrated on his breathing. He assumed his stance. He wasn’t sure how to focus on discipline, unless his new teacher meant for him to think about all the ways he’d be punished if he didn’t do the first two, but Zuko figured The Carp wasn’t the type of teacher who cared enough about Zuko even to punish him. Mostly, Zuko thought, The Carp was just bored of teaching him. 

That seemed fair: Zuko was bored of being taught. He could only do so much breathing and standing and focusing.

His nose itched. 

Zuko sneaked a peek at The Carp sitting in the shade: he was still frowning, but his eyes were closed. He didn’t seem to be paying his pupil any attention at all.  Zuko risked a scratch.

A beady eye flew open. “Back to your stance! You’re not breathing! Think about discipline!” 

Zuko let his hand drop. He wished, quite desperately, that he was more talented. More like his sister and his cousin. He wished he wasn’t stuck in this courtyard with The Carp.

Compared to Azula and Lu Ten, Zuko was last in everything except in age and height, two things he couldn’t control. But even for that he wasn’t the first, but squarely in the middle. He wasn’t first for anything. He wasn’t very clever or interesting or any good at firebending. Zuko knew all of this about himself because in his family, comparing offspring was a favourite topic of conversation. Even his mother, Zuko’s greatest and possibly his only fan, had to admit her son was a bit outshone by his sister and cousin.

The truth is, every Fire Nation family, not just the royal one, had had this type of conversation. It was not unusual. If Zuko spent more time with boys his age, he would learn that almost every single one of them had, at some point, sat through a family dinner feeling angry and hopelessly inadequate. Everyone knows what shame feels like: it sticks to the throat like a lump of cold porridge. But Zuko didn’t spend any time with boys his age. He was a loner by nature. And spending that much time alone gave Zuko some very peculiar ideas.

For instance, when he pictured his sister or cousin, he pictured two meteors streaking across the night sky. They flew through the world so quickly that Zuko, stuck on the ground with leaden feet, couldn’t possibly catch up. Who could outrun two people who flew?

(Zuko never considered that meteors, by the time he saw them, were not flying but falling. Their light and heat came from the bits of them that burned up as they hurtled through the atmosphere. 

He also never considered that standing on the ground was much better than falling from the sky.

But why would he? He was ten years old.)

***

The Carp’s real name wasn’t “The Carp”,  but that was what the royal family called him. 

The nickname came from the first time Zuko and Azula met him, when the two of them were still excited about meeting a former war hero (The Carp served in the navy before he became a firebending master). Azula had asked him a technical question about the hull designs of icebreaker ships. She wanted to know if the new reamer models could really reduce frictional resistance on ice without compromising open-water maneuverability. If this was true, how long until the Fire Navy could penetrate the icy defenses of the Northern Water Tribe and turn the tide of the war?

She got a loud harumph in response. “ War ? What does a girl know about war?”

“I think I know a lot, actually,” Azula said firmly.

“Do you understand how propulsion systems work? No? Battle formations? Supply logistics in the Arctic? Then these questions are a waste of my time.”

Azula pouted. “They’re not a waste--”

“If a fish had lived its whole life in a pond, does it know about the movements of the ocean? No! Only that there is water that moves beyond its control. A young girl cannot understand warfare.”

Azula was taken aback. This wasn’t how strangers usually treated her. People meeting Azula for the first time usually had one of two reactions: they loved her or feared her. Not many people dismissed her. She hated the man instantly.

“He’s very rude,” she said to her mother and father afterwards, at dinner. “And he’s obsessed with fish for some reason. Well, doesn’t he look like one? Like one of the koi carp in the gardens? We should call him The Carp.” 

It was a very good nickname. The Carp did have two long tendrils of hair poking out of his upper lip, just like the two barbels growing out of the side of a koi fish. They even quivered when he talked, like barbels waving under the water. He had two dark beady eyes and a gurgling, piscine way of gaping his mouth in annoyance. Before long, even their parents had to stop themselves from reflexively calling him The Carp to his face.

“Stupid Carp,” muttered Zuko under his breath. He closed his eyes and pretended to be meditating, but really he was thinking about the sea, how refreshing a swim would be, how nice the water would feel, in contrast to standing here under the hot sun with his new teacher for company. 

From the shade, The Carp barked, “Stance! Breathing! Discipline!” and settled back down. Zuko wasn’t the only person who would rather be somewhere else. The Carp didn’t want to be there either, but he had to make a show of teaching his royal charge something. 

Unknown to either of them, Zuko and The Carp heaved a sigh at exactly the same time. They each hoped the other one wouldn’t notice.

The Carp felt that he was wasting his time teaching a snotty little boy firebending.  Teaching wasn’t his purpose. He had a much grander destiny than that. 

Though she couldn’t possibly have guessed this, Azula was right in another way by calling him The Carp. The man was a carp because he was fishy; he was there with a fishy purpose. The Carp, you see, worked for a secret organization. They pulled strings to get him close to the royal family on Ember Island during their midsummer holiday. 

His purpose was a secret mission, for his secret organization.

***

Someone, or three someones , to be precise, entered the courtyard. They were  all important people, so The Carp got up from his seat and bowed. 

 “A fine morning to you, Dragon of the West,”  he said, and then bowed a second time to the boy next to the general. “And you too, Prince Lu Ten.” 

Almost as an afterthought, he added, “And you too, Princess.”

The three people were a man, a man’s son, and a man’s wife. The man’s name was Iroh, but most people called him by one of his titles: Crown Prince or General or the Dragon of the West. 

His son was Lu Ten. 

His wife’s name was irrelevant, because she never did anything and barely spoke. If people called her anything, they called her delicate and poorly, which was true. She was always vaguely and pleasantly ill in some way, always surrounded by a little miasma of vapour from her herbal draughts and little pots of mentholated balms. She was so insubstantial she was like a miasma herself. Sometimes her husband and son forgot she even existed. 

While they talked, she drooped silently under her parasol.

“Hi Zuko, how’s it going?” asked Lu Ten, at the same time as the Dragon of the West asked The Carp: “How’s my nephew’s progress?” 

“Fine,” said Zuko and The Carp at the same time, both equally non-enthusiastic. They looked at each other in surprise.

The Dragon of the West cleared his throat. “I hate to interrupt a teacher at work, but a short break won’t do any harm. Why don’t we sit and have  some tea, and let the boys play for a while? My son wants to spend some time with his cousin this morning.” 

The Carp was so ecstatic the lesson was over that it made his carp-like moustache tremble. He made a big show of dismissing Zuko. 

“Just this once,” he told him. “You can play for a while, but don’t forget we must keep working on your breathing and your stance.”

“And my discipline,” Zuko muttered sarcastically.

The Carp frowned. “Dismissed.”

He flapped his sleeve. Zuko bowed and ran off before the sleeve stopped fluttering.

“What a sunny morning,” said the vague and pleasant wife, as if she just realized there were other people around.  “I wonder if it’ll get even sunnier later? I’m sure it’ll get sunnier at noon, though maybe not. I suppose it won’t be sunny if it’s cloudy.”

Everyone ignored her.

***

The two of them, Zuko and Lu Ten, stopped at the opposite side of the courtyard and sat down on the sides of a cracked stone fountain. Zuko dunked his face into the water. The cold water was delicious on a hot day. He felt pretty good about escaping The Carp, at least until Lu Ten said without warning:

“I know about you and Azula’s plan to sneak out.”

Zuko blinked the water out of his eyes. “What plan?”

“The plan to sneak into town.”

“No! There’s no plan. I don’t know anything about a plan. What are you talking about? What – where did you even hear about this?”

Lu Ten gave his cousin a long look. Zuko got flustered easily under pressure. “I overheard you two on the barge. I was standing by the railings and it happened to be over your cabin. Don’t leave your window open next time you want to say something secret.”

“Secret? I don’t have any secrets,” Zuko said weakly.

“Sure,” said Lu Ten.

 “Are you going to tell on us?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“I told you,” said Lu Ten. “No.”

Zuko’s shoulders eased down from their tense position around his ears. He sat down on the edge of the fountain. Lu Ten was so good and well-behaved that it seemed just like him to run off to the adults at the first opportunity. “Thanks.”

“I want to come along with you two,” said Lu Ten.

Splash. Zuko was so surprised that he fell backwards, off the stone ledge of the fountain that he was sitting on and into the water. He crawled out, spluttering, just in time to hear Lu Ten say, with terrible earnestness:

“C’mon, Zuko. You can’t say stuff like that about my dad without proof. I want to see it for myself. “

“ I wasn’t saying anything, it was Azula-- ”

“And besides,” Lu Ten went on, talking over Zuko. “You two are much better off with me coming along. What if you need someone to protect you from a murderer or a wild salamander-snake? You don’t know what you might meet out there in the town.”

Zuko shook his head. “Azula’s not going to like this.”

“Azula doesn’t like anything,” Lu Ten countered. “Anyways, she’s a girl and she’s younger than you. Show a little backbone and just tell her I’m coming and that’s that.”

Still dripping, Zuko gave his cousin a dubious look. Lu Ten had said all of this in a very breezy way, as someone who was an only child could. He only had Azula as a cousin, not a sister. He had no idea the million different ways that Azula could make Zuko’s life a misery if she wanted to. 

Zuko didn’t have a knack for reading people. He couldn’t articulate why, but he knew that he was terrified of upsetting Azula in any way, shape, or form. Everyone either loved her or feared her: Father loved her; Mother was afraid of her. And in return, Azula loved and hated both of them for it. But Azula’s favourite person in the family -- in the whole world, in fact -- was her brother: no one loved or feared anyone as much as Zuko both loved and feared Azula.

“I just think it’s better if you stay behind tonight,” Zuko said. He had a flash of inspiration. “I mean, do you really want to waste your time with your baby cousins? It’ll be boring anyways. Why don’t we ask the servants to take us elephant-koi surfing this week? It’ll be so much better—"

“No. If Azula’s right and dragons are still alive, then I want to see one.”

“Azula’s probably lying. She always lies.”

“I guess I’ll find out.”

Zuko sighed.

Lu Ten gave him a vague and pleasant smile. “Come here.” He dried his still dripping cousin off with a precise blast of heat. It was an impressive show of firebending. Lu Ten was thirteen and already at the tenth-advanced-expert firebending level.

“Thanks.”

“No problem,” said Lu Ten, still pleasant, “and by the way, if you two leave without me. I’ll rat you two out to my dad. Then none of us will be able to go anywhere.”

The threat hung in the air like a bad smell. Zuko sighed again. 

Lu Ten patted him on the shoulder and turned up the pleasantness of his smile. “I think we’re at a stalemate.”

***

“I think we’re at a stalemate,” said the Dragon of the West. He gestured at the Pai Sho board on the table.

“So we are,” said The Carp.

The adults were sitting on the other side of the courtyard from Zuko and Lu Ten. Servants had brought a pot of tea and small porcelain bowls of rice crackers and peeled lychee-nuts. They also brought a Pai Sho board. The two men – the Carp and the Dragon of the West – were playing a game.

“What do you call this tactic?” asked the Dragon of the West. He peered at the center tile in the board. “I’ve never seen this before.”

“The White Lotus sacrifice.”

“Never heard of it. Is it new?”

“It’s actually very old.” The Carp had to resist giving the Dragon’s wife an annoyed look. He was trying to accomplish his secret mission, but her presence was really putting a damper on things. “But not many still cling to the ancient ways.”

“Oh no,” said the Dragon of the West, smiling cluelessly. “We’re very modern here.”

The Carp took a risk. “But do you ever wish that things were – less modern? Do you ever look around and wish that things were a bit more -- I don’t know, different?”

“Pardon?”

In for a copper piece, in for a gold one. “Long ago, there were four nations. Do you ever ask yourself if maybe there was a reason for it?”

The Dragon of the West was still smiling cluelessly. “I don’t think I wondered that.”

The Carp was startled. “Never? You never thought about why there were four elements and four nations?”

“Something to do with harmony. Harmony or balance, I suppose,” said the Dragon. He ate a lychee-nut.

“Or peace,” said The Carp, taking a bigger risk. “Have you spent a lot of time in the Earth Kingdom colonies? Do you ever think--” 

“Oh!”

“What?”

The Dragon let out a loud guffaw that came from the belly. “Have you ever heard the joke about the earthbender’s daughter?” 

“Uh--” began The Carp.

“Well, speaking of Earth Kingdom, stop me if you’ve heard this one before: she was only the earthbender’s daughter, but she knew how to get your rocks off!” Another loud guffaw.

The Carp opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it, then closed it, then opened it again. It made him look fishier than ever. “Oh.”

“What about the one about the waterbender’s daughter? She was only a waterbender’s daughter, but she always got--” 

“I’ve heard it,” The Carp said quickly.

“Sure, sure. Your move,” said the Dragon.

***

“Your move,” said Lu Ten.

Zuko threw up his hands. “Fine! Fine. Come along. But if something goes wrong, don’t count on me to help you out. And if you get into trouble, that’s your problem.”

Lu Ten smiled. It was a ridiculous suggestion: his younger cousin was so bad at everything that it was ridiculous to think Lu Ten would ever need his help. But Lu Ten indulged him. 

“Alright. We’ll meet in my room after bedtime. There’s a balcony right below my window, we can climb down and get to the beach easily from there. Tell Azula when you see her.”

“Urgh, no,” said Zuko. He scrunched up his face. He didn’t like how quickly Azula’s plan was becoming Azula-and-Lu-Ten’s plan.

“No?”

“We’ll leave from my room.”

“Fine,” said Lu Ten easily. “See you there then.”

After he ambled away, Zuko frowned at the ground. He was feeling uneasy. If it were just him and Azula who were caught sneaking out at night, they might get punished, but Zuko was used to punishment. What were they going to do? Give him more lines to copy? Memorize more boring scrolls? Make him stand more hours under the hot sun concentrating on breathing with The Carp? But involving Lu Ten was different: Lu Ten was Uncle Iroh’s son; after Iroh, he was the next in line for the throne.

Zuko and Azula were royal too, but Lu Ten was very, very royal. If Zuko and Azula get caught being a bad influence on Lu Ten, they’ll get something worse than punishment. 

Their father might get involved. Zuko was terrified of that idea. 

***

The servants came by with more tea and crackers and seeds and lychee-nuts for the adults. To the wife of the Dragon of the West they brought a bigger fan, in case the day was too hot, and then some more cushions, in case the Dragon’s wife needed somewhere to rest her head or swoon. She didn’t do either, but she did acknowledge the fan and the cushions in her vague and pleasant way and went back to staring out over the courtyard, at the little figures of her son and nephew talking by the old fountain.

The Pai Sho game went on. The Carp lost. 

His mind just wasn’t on the game. He was thinking instead about his secret mission, which was this: find the Crown Prince and talk to him. Everyone said that Prince Iroh was the more enlightened one, so see if he has any secret anti-war sentiments. Persuade him if you can. Sway him over to our side. If you can, recruit him. 

“It wasn’t as bad a loss as it looked,” said the Dragon. “There were a few points where you almost could have trapped me. You showed some promise, I thought. That pincer attack you tried in the northeast corner -- that wasn’t too bad. I’m sure it was just the heat of the day affecting your play, that’s all.” 

He beamed at The Carp, who gritted his teeth. The Carp knew it was a difficult mission before he came to Ember Island. He just wasn’t expecting it to be this difficult.

“Thank you for the kind words, Crown Prince Iroh,” said The Carp with effort. He stood up from the Pai Sho board. “But if you can excuse me, I think I need a break now.”

 “It’s good to take a break,” the wife said vaguely, from the corner of the pavilion where she was sitting. “Sometimes breaks are good for learning. Unless they’re bad. I suppose something wouldn’t be good if it’s bad.” 

Everyone ignored her again.

***

We should say a few words here about the Dragon of the West:

He was called the Dragon of the West because he had killed a dragon – or so he claimed. In truth he had visited an ancient temple and saw some very, very large dragons and met some charming natives who played the drums and wore very little clothing.

One of them was the chief. He had pulled the Dragon aside for a private conversation once he realised this man was serious about looking for a large, scaly, fire-breathing winged beast to fight.  

“How about this?” said the chief. “Why risk your life battling a large, scaly, fire-breathing winged beast? What’s the point of that, my friend? What if, instead you just say you did it? No one’s going to find out otherwise. We’ll keep it a secret, you’ll keep it a secret: everybody wins.”

“I don’t know,” said the man who hadn’t become Dragon of the West yet. “It seems a little – dishonest. Not really honourable, if you understand what I mean.”

The chief laughed; he was a jovial looking man with red paint around his eyes. When he laughed, the paint creased up. “We’re friends, aren’t we? What’s a little conspiracy between friends?”

“We ‘ve only just met.”

The red paint creased up even further as the chief did some quick thinking. Then he gave his visitor a hearty slap on the back.  “You strike me as a very modern man, so think of it this way: think of it as...wildlife conservation.”

“Wildlife conservation?”

The chief nodded encouragingly. “You’re safeguarding the species for future generations.”

“Right.”

“It’s basically charity work,” said the chief soothingly. “From now on, you can call yourself something like, oh, I don’t know -- something worthy. How about t he Dragon of the West?”

“The Dragon of the West,” said the man. He rubbed his jaw. “I like the ring of it.”

“Right! Right, sounds absolutely wonderful,” said the chief. “And only you and I would know that it refers to the man who saved the dragons, not destroyed them. It’ll be like a codename. How’s that, eh?”

“A codename,” repeated the man thoughtfully. He liked the sound of that: the sound of a little conspiracy between friends; that appealed to him, the idea of a secret that only a select few people would understand. He liked codes and mysteries and silly little conspiracy things -- men often did.

The chief watched the visitor’s face very carefully. “And don’t forget it’s charity work,” he added, going in for the non-kill.  

“Charity,” repeated the man.

He liked that too. It sounded very – noble and sensitive and helpful. He often thought of himself like that. Here he was, doing something very kind for the native people. The man liked benevolence. He had a particular kind of arrogance, one that made him particularly benevolent towards unworthy people. The more beneath him they were, the more benevolent he felt. He couldn’t help it; he was noble like that.

He put his hands together and gave the chief  a traditional Fire Nation bow. “Deal.”

The chief bowed back. While their heads were both lowered, he rolled his eyes.

They toasted their deal by drinking a cup of White Jade tea together, and then the man -- the newly minted Dragon of the West -- was sent on his way. 

From a high tower, the chief watched him leave. He was an idiot, the chief thought, but still he had to admit that the man was very good with booby traps. The man hummed cheerfully as he winded his way past the ancient booby-trap, jumped across the pit with the metal spikes, sidestepped the trick tile that plunged one into a pool of wolf-piranhas,  and even avoided overgrown tree root in the outer courtyard. (That one wasn’t intentionally a trap, but no one had gotten around to manicuring the garden yet).

The man left the way he came, safe and sound.

“Pity,” muttered the chief in his tower. He spat on the ground. The White Jade tea tasted alright as he was drinking it, but the after-taste it left behind was awful: grassy and very bitter. It lingered on the tongue, like the taste of bile.

***

While the children were scheming and the adults were playing Pai Sho, the Old Man paced around his room, thinking very hard.

He had a magnificent room, the best one of all in the royal summer house. The walls were built out of imported cypress wood, dark and handsome. The cypress had a beautiful luster and gave off the faint scent of lemons. 

“I have an idea,” the Old Man announced to his pet.

The iguana-parrot squawked. It didn’t like the stuffy room; the cloying scent of the wooden walls choked the air and made it unbearable. The Old Man fed it a seed cracker; the bird pecked it a few times and then dropped it on the floor of its cage. 

“This really is a terrific idea,” said the Old Man.

The iguana-parrot was dying to leave. It squawked again. If it could express itself in human language, it would cry out, let me out! Let me out!

But it was only taught to say one thing.

 “Burn it down! Burn it down!” squawked the iguana-parrot.

“That’s right,” said the Old Man absent-mindedly. “That’s right.”

*** 

“Darling,” said Ursa-who-would-become-Noriko. She was talking to her husband, who was sitting next to her on the sand. “Did you notice Azula today?”

Her husband looked up from the scroll he was reading. “Hmm?”

“Azula. She’s very quiet.”

Her husband shrugged.

“It’s just -- when Azula is quiet, I start fretting. It makes me think she’s going to get up to something. Don’t you think?”

Her husband shrugged again.

Ursa-who-would-become-Noriko took out a handkerchief and wrung it between her sweaty palms. She was meant to be relaxing on the beach, but something worried her. The cloud of depression descended closer on her head. She slumped down a little.

“Don’t worry yourself so much,” said her husband. “It’ll give you lines on your forehead. There. See? A smile already makes you look much better. Now relax, darling. Maybe you’re getting too cold. The cold always makes you grumpy. ”

He looked up and beckoned. A nearby servant rushed over with an extra blanket. 

“I’m just...I think --” she began, and then gave up and laid back. “Nevermind. Thank you for the blanket.”

“Any time,” her husband said gallantly. He went back to reading his scroll. The sea breeze made it flutter, and his wife caught a glimpse of the title: Chronicles of Siege Warfare: Or, a History of the Siege Failures and of Earth Kingdom Defenses in the Inner Ring, Outer Ring, and the Surrounding Areas of Ba Sing Se.

***

“Azula?”

“Yes, Zuzu?”

“You’re not going to like this.”

“What is it?”

“You know about--” a furtive look to the left and right, and Zuko dropped his voice “--about your plan to sneak out tonight?”

“And?”

“Please don’t get mad.”

“ What is it? ”

“I tried to stop him, okay? But it’s your stupid fault for talking about it on the boat in the first place.”

Azula gave her brother a cold look. “ Zuzu .”

Zuko swallowed nervously. There were a lot of bad things one could say about Zuko, but he did have a particular kind of foolish honesty. He had no natural cunning whatsoever: when presented with a problem, the only way out for Zuko was through.  

He steeled himself and explained the whole thing about Lu Ten coming along to Azula.

All in all, he thought afterwards, examining a singed sleeve, it could have been worse. Azula only set the outer layer on fire. And he didn’t even like his new jacket anyways. It was red. Everything in Zuko’s wardrobe was either red, gold, or black. Sometimes he wished he could wear something else for once. A nice green, maybe. Or a pretty lavender. But he was royal, so he must wear the royal colours. Everyone said so.

Zuko shrugged off his jacket. They had agreed to wear their plain training clothes to sneak into town. He didn’t mind his training clothes so much, though the only pair the maids had unpacked was the set he had worn during the day. They were sweat-stained and crumpled, but they would have to do. Zuko just hoped his sister won’t set these on fire as well.

***

An hour after the three sparks were sent to bed, there came a soft tap on Zuko’s doorframe. He slid it open as noiselessly as he could.

“Come in quickly!” he hissed to Lu Ten and Azula. His eyes darted down the hallway. Was that the silhouette of a maidservant coming by to check on them? No, just the flickering shadow from a brazier.

Lu Ten and Azula walked in, far too casually for Zuko’s comfort. They wore their plain training clothes and carried their shoes in their hands.

“How are we getting out of the house?” Lu Ten asked.

Azula was already busy tying up the bedsheets into ropes. “We’ll climb out from the balcony. Then we swing out, jump, and land on the stable roof. There are vines on the southern side, so we can use them to climb down. Then it’s a quick run through the undergrowth to the road. Easy.”

Lu Ten gave a doubtful look to the knotted sheets. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

“Yeah, ‘course. I’ve done it hundreds of times.”

“You’ve done it once ,” hissed her brother. “And that was on a dare, in broad daylight.”

Azula waved her hand. “What’s the difference? You afraid you’re not as good as a girl?”

“No, I just think you shouldn’t say that you’ve done something a hundred times when you haven’t.”

“It's a figure of speech , Zuko. You’re so annoying--”

Lu Ten held up a hand before the siblings could continue bickering. “Nevermind that. Who’s going to go first?”

“Zuko?” Azula said sweetly. She gave the bedsheet one last tug to make sure it was secure against the balustrades of the small balcony. “Why don’t you go?”

Zuko gulped. 

I hate Azula, he thought as he climbed gingerly down the rope. I hate Azula I hate Azula I hate --

A rush of air. Bang. Crash.

“Zuko!” hissed a voice from above. 

Zuko blinked the stars out of his vision in time to see Lu Ten’s handsome face poke over the balcony. 

“Are you okay?”

Zuko went over the last few moments in his mind. He had banged his knee against the stable roof and tore the skin off  his left palm on the woodwork, but he’d made it. Thank Agni. He calls up to Lu Ten, “I’m fine. But tell Azula I hate her.”

Lu Ten didn’t hear him. He was already climbing down the bedsheet rope himself. He swung a perfect arc through the air and landed in a crouching position on the roof. Then, light and surefooted, he scampered down on the vines and landed with no more sound than a cat.

Zuko sighed. 

Azula, not to be outdone, unknotted the sheets and shoved them back on the bed. She closed the balcony door behind her. Taking a running start, she vaulted clean over the railing, turned a somersault in mid-air, and then landed on the edge of the roof gable. She didn’t climb down, but leapt towards the opposite wall, using her momentum to ricochet between the two walls to slow her descent. She landed with no more sound than moonlight falling across the shadow of a drifting leaf. 

Even Lu Ten had to give a grudging nod of approval. 

Azula brushed some non-existent dirt off her hand. She was so smug that she didn’t even bother to look smug. “The road’s that way.”

Zuko sighed again. I’ve got to learn how to jump off roofs , he thought to himself.

***

The royal family sat down to a casual dinner, relaxed with the knowledge that their three precious sparks were tucked safely in bed.

Dinner was a simple affair: the first course was a dish of sea bream milt (the pieces of fish all sliced up and arranged to look like a flame), then a platter of pickled shrimp (also arranged in a flame shape), then slices of under-cooked steak (still flame-shaped), then some more fish steamed with rose petals (likewise), then some glazed tofu (likewise again), then a refreshing salad of wild mountain vegetables, then more soup, then more fish, then more salads -- and so on and so on and so on. And after that , dessert. It was a very casual dinner, you see.

What made the dinner casual was that The Carp was there. Normally a tutor would never sit with the royal family at meal times, but tonight was an exception. Teachers were respected in the Fire Nation, but not so respected one would forget they were, after all, still the help. But tonight the Dragon of the West was feeling generous.

“Well, why shouldn’t he eat with us?” he had said to everyone. “We’re modern rulers in a modern era. We’re not going to follow all the old, stuffy customs all the time, are we?”

The Dragon of the West was very modern in his way. He had never had to question the society that he lived in, because everything about it had worked out very well for him so far. He had a sickly but beautiful wife and a wonderful son. He was at the top of his firebending class (he was a prodigy), the top of the military (he was a general), the top of the line for succession (he was a prince). Like all very successful and lucky people, he harboured a vague pity for everyone else. He felt that they could all honestly just work a bit harder.

He liked his nephew’s new firebending master. The Carp had the kind of life that the privileged liked to hear about. He had been born to poor farmers, but then he enlisted in the navy and climbed his way up through hard work. He became a war hero, which really helped him overcome his unfortunate mistake of being born to poor farmers. The Dragon liked to see hard work in other people; it made him feel even better about himself. All this meritocracy was so very -- modern. The Dragon felt like that ought to be celebrated. 

He leaned over to his guest, who was poking something on his plate in a glum fashion. “Alright there? You’ve barely touched your sea bream.”

“I’m not hungry,” lied The Carp. He poked at his food with a chopstick. He couldn’t figure out which of these red- and pink-coloured parts he was supposed to eat. 

The Dragon lifted up a mysterious piece of stuff that The Carp thought could be seahorse, could be something else. “It’s this food, isn’t it? I know what’s wrong: the kitchens in this Ember Island are just damn intolerable. Look at this! What was the chef using to cut this? His shoe?” 

He said this very loudly.  Everyone at the table gave a polite titter.

The Carp stared at the piece of unidentifiable seahorse. It fell back on the plate with a wet plop. The plate was round but the tray underneath was shaped like the Fire Nation insignia – ie. like a flame. Everything was shaped like a flame on the royal table: the napkins and chopstick stands and the decorative floral arrangements and the food. After a while, it made The Carp feel uneasy.

Everything looked like it was burning up very slowly.

“Shall I ask them to send up another plate of something for you?” asked the Dragon.

The Carp shook his head. He felt like he should be making better conversation, trying harder to recruit his target over to his side, but it was hard to get a word in. The other man had a personality that rushed in and swept everyone up, like a tsunami. Now The Carp was washed up in front of a lacquered tray, staring at a bewildering arrangement of cut-up seahorse parts. 

“I do hope you’re enjoying yourself,” said his host. “It’s the latest in modern cuisine.”

“...yes,” said The Carp, lying through his teeth. “I am.”

Another servant stepped forward and refilled everyone’s cups with rice wine. The Dragon lifted his: “A toast! To the Fire Nation!”

“ To the Fire Nation! ” chorused everyone at the table.

“...to the Fire Nation,” The Carp said, with a great deal less enthusiasm.

“And to the war!” added the Dragon’s baby brother, trying to get in the last word.

“ To the war! ” 

“...to the war,” The Carp mumbled. 

“To the modern era!” the Dragon added. He didn’t notice his baby brother’s scowl.

“ To the modern era! ”

The Carp didn’t say this one out loud; he felt too queasy. 

No one remarked on it, because no one was listening to him.

The dinner went on.

The Carp stroked one end of his moustache and tried to focus on his breathing. When he first accepted the post, he had been excited about his secret mission, but now he wasn’t so sure: spending time with the royal family was making him hate his own country. He was a very old-fashioned man -- he just couldn’t follow the trends of the new modern thinking.

***

Three bright sparks walked along the dark road for a long time. 

Clip-clop, clip-cop. The sound of hooves signaled that a wagon was coming up. When it got closer, the three sparks saw that the wagon was pulled by a tired-looking dragon-moose, its reins in the hands of a tired-looking man wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat, sitting crooked on his skinny head with one strap hanging loose.

Azula gestured for Zuko and Lu Ten to stand back, and then stepped out in front of the wagon. The sudden apparition of a little girl on this stretch of dirt road surprised the driver. 

“Sonofabitch! Damnit! What in Agni’s name is happening!”

He pulled up his reins, and the dragon-moose came to a shambling stop. “What d’ya want, girl?” he yelled. “You coulda been ran over!”

Azula calmly started the negotiations. “Are you going into town?”

“Yeah.”

“I would like to pay you to take on an extra passenger.”

The driver snorted. “The wagon’s already full, girl.”

Azula gave him, his wagon, and his dragon-moose an imperious glance. “I’ll pay you a copper piece. You look like you need it. Perhaps you can buy a new hat.”

The driver gave her a look back, in this case an up-and-down and side-to-side look. He couldn’t believe some kid was talking to him this way. Some instinct told him that giving a ride to a tiny girl with a posh accent walking along the road in the middle of nowhere was a bad idea.

“Look here, kiddo—”

“I’ll pay you a silver piece,” Azula said.

Well. The driver fell silent again. A silver piece was nothing to be sneezed at. A silver piece was a day’s wages driving the cart. A silver piece was enough to turn a bad idea into a good one. He took off his crooked hat and scratched his head. Finally, he came to a conclusion.

“Damnit! Son-of-a-bitchin’ bastard! You might as well – you might as damn well.” He nodded over his shoulder.

Azula stared at him blankly. She, though intelligent and an excellent judge of character, was not fluent in the language of everyday people. For people like the driver, obscenity and profanity formed its own dialect; they were phrases that could mean many things depending on their expression and tone. So right now, for instance, what the driver was trying to say was, “Alright, I see your terms and I accept your offer.” But this flew over Azula’s head. The driver saw this, and amended himself:

“Get in, you lousy kid. Damnit.”

“Ah,” said Azula. She climbed nimbly into the back. The driver tightened his grip on the reins, and then Azula said, delicately, “Just one more thing.”

The driver sighed.

“It’s very dangerous for a small girl like me to be out alone by myself, anything might happen to me. You’ll understand if I bring along protection for myself–“

“What’s your damn point?”

Azula turned and beckoned toward the bushes beside the road, where Zuko and Lu Ten were crouched in mute moral support.“I have my brother and my cousin here to protect me, they need to come along too.”

The two boys crawled out.

“The wagon’s full,” protested the driver, but it was too late. He gave the two newcomers a lookover: one of them was scrawny and small, but the older one was practically a grown man. He looked like someone who might put up a fight if the driver tried to kick him off, and the driver had deliveries to make; he had his normal day’s wages to earn. He didn’t want to tangle with these three mysterious kids. His stomach clenched.

Zuko and Lu Ten scrambled on the wagon and nestled themselves between the baskets and crates. They were not very careful with other people’s belongings. The driver winced at the sound of a pile of baskets stumbling over, and then a stack of terracotta pots being upturned. A chicken squawked as a stray elbow jolted her bamboo cage. 

“Agni save me,” the driver muttered. “What a damned, lousy, rotten world this is. I should be tossing you kids out right now.”

He felt something very, very hot pressed against his back. A small flame had burned through his tunic and his undershirt, but stopped, with exquisite control, right before it touched the skin. The second before flesh started to sear, Azula pulled her hand away.

“Remember your silver piece,” she said in her sweet girlish voice. “You agreed to this, remember?”

The flame was hot, but the driver broke into a cold sweat anyways. Not trusting himself to speak anymore, he picked up the reins and clicked his tongue. The dragon-moose trotted on. 

Slowly, the wagon drove onwards through the night.

***

Around the seventh course, The Carp was abruptly dismissed. “We have some family matters to discuss,” said the Old Man, who had been silent until then.

The Carp tried not to look too eager as he scampered from the room. 

After he was gone, the Old Man cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking,” he began portentously.

“Oh boy,” muttered the Dragon of the West. 

“I’ve been thinking about the next step of the war. What we should do next. For too long we’ve been at a stalemate with the Earth Kingdom. A colony here, a colony there -- and for what? We’re squabbling over dirt.”

“Burn it down!” screamed the iguana-parrot helpfully.

“I’m not getting any younger, you know,” continued the Old Man.

Everyone around the table pretended like they were shocked at the idea.

“Oh no!”

“Father, you’ll outlive all of us.”

“Fit and spry, I always thought.”

“Prime of your life, your seventies.”

The Old Man made a chopping motion with the flat of his hand. “Shut up, all of you. As I was saying: I’m not getting any younger. And when one approaches the autumn of one’s life, one begins to think--”

“Autumn?” muttered one of his sons sotto voce , and his brother hid a smirk. “Dear Dad passed mid-winter half a decade ago.”

“One begins to think about his legacy,” said the Old Man, oblivious. “And when I think about the Fire Lords who came before me -- like my own father, for instance, I think about their great deeds that will be remembered for all posterity. And I ask myself: what will I, Azulon, leave behind?”

“A stinking parrot and Grandad’s second-best dragon teeth armour?” muttered the other son.

“And my legacy will be this: Fire Lord Azulon will be remembered as the man who conquered the unconquerable Ba Sing Se. We’ll begin the siege next spring.”

Ursa-who-would-become-Noriko knocked over her teacup. A servant dove in with a towel; she batted him away. “ Ba Sing Se ?”

She took a look around the table. The Dragon of the West looked as stunned as she felt, but her own husband met her gaze with a mild little smile. He didn't look quite as surprised as everyone else.

“If we don’t invade them, someone else will,” he said. “Why shouldn’t it be us?”

“But -- darling… ”

Her husband tilted his head. “Yes?”

“I’m not so sure about this idea, darling. Do we really need Ba Sing Se? What does Ba Sing Se have that we don’t have already?”

The Old Man slapped the table. “It has the Earth King, you silly girl.”

“Yes, well--”

By now the Dragon of the West had adapted to the situation. “Taking Ba Sing Se has a lot of political ramifications, Ursa. You have to understand that they’re not as... developed as we are. It’s an agrarian feudal system over there. It’s all muddy earthbenders squabbling around in the dirt. Do you know that just one of our steamships could carry the cargo of ten of their wooden sailboats? They live in dreadful poverty, you know. They won’t even teach women earthbending. They’re not like us . Think of what we could do there if we’re in control of the country.”

The Dragon of the West was slowly talking himself around to the idea. It all sounded very – enlightened.

“The glory of the Fire Nation depends on bringing the capital to its knees,” added the Old Man. He was irritated that no one else was as excited as he was.

“Taking Ba Sing Se -- you know, I think we would be liberating them from an outdated mode of tyranny.”

“We would win the war, you idiot child.” 

“Now, now, Dad--” 

The Dragon’s little brother cleared his throat. “The mountains to the north of Ba Sing Se have a lot of coal,” he said quietly. “At the rate we’re depleting our own mines, our factories need the resources.”

“Burn!” squawked the iguana-parrot.

The wives said nothing. 

They were two very different women, but they were both thinking the same thing. The Fire Nation has technically been at war for almost a hundred years at this point, but the majority of the fighting had been done and over with before they were even born. A century after Sozin’s comet, it seemed like the only thing a Fire Lord had to do was to buckle down and keep the existing colonies under control, keep up that endless rolling supply of marble and coal and timber and wheat and barley and steel for warships and death machines and etcetera etcetera. Actual sieges were something else altogether. That would be actual warfare. It might involve actual fighting.

People might actually die.

“It all sounds so unpleasant, this conquering and laying sieges business,” added the wife of the Dragon. “I mean, I’m not so sure I see the point of it all. This war thing, I mean.”

It was the first non-silly thing she said all week, and it was the closest thing to an opinion she had expressed in years. It deserved to have been marked as a monumental occasion, but the whole family was so used to ignoring her -- even her sister-in-law -- that they continued ignoring her now.

“We’ll start next spring,” said the Old Man. “And that’s my final decision. I’ll announce it to the public tomorrow.”

The Old Man’s sons shared a glance over their dinners. They rarely agreed, but the shared glance meant that they agreed on one thing: their old man was an idiot. Azulon was becoming a real menace in his old age. He thought he could order something done and it would just happen. He thought that ordering a new siege was the same as ordering a fruit tart. He didn’t realise that, in their modern and enlightened era, wars had to be justified. You didn’t get soldiers and firebenders to lay down their lives because the Fire Lord told them to; you got them to die by convincing them they had to. You needed a story, like tales about sweet-faced children counting on soldiers and firebenders to roast as many earthbenders as they can to charred crisps. The idea of honour came in quite handy at times like this, they found. It was quite a complex glance, but it was a glance the two of them had shared many times before.

“I’ll gather the other generals and admirals for a new war council meeting,” said the Dragon.

“I’ll draft the public announcements and the declaration of siege,” said his brother.

The dinner went on. They finished the soup. Eight courses done, only fourteen more to go.

“Burn it down! Burn it all down!” squawked the iguana-parrot.

Everyone ignored it.

***

The kids weren’t the only ones heading into town that night: The Carp was heading there too. He didn’t have to hitch a ride; he took a mongoose-lizard like a sensible adult. On his way there he passed by a farmer’s wagon piled with items in the back; in the dark neither of them paid the other much attention.

He left the mongoose-lizard tethered on the outskirts of town and walked the rest of the way. He moved purposefully, weaving his fishy way past the dense currents of people and animals.  He was on his way to meet another member of his secret organization.

***

The Dragon of the West stopped by the kitchens after dinner to have a stern word with the chef (So clumsy with the knife! Good help is just impossible to find these days.)  

“Just be more careful next time,” he said kindly to the man, who nodded frantically with a terrified expression.

On the way out, the Dragon of the West climbed up the back staircase; there was a window in the stairwell that looked out over one of the courtyards. From there, the Dragon could see two maids half-sitting on top some disused barrels. After the dinner rush, the two girls were taking a short break. They slipped off the handkerchief tying back their hair so the cool sea breeze could sweep across their overheated faces. The Dragon liked pretty girls; he stopped to take a longer look. 

One of them was wringing her handkerchiefs around and around in her hands. “I don’t know, I just feel like he doesn’t really care. I said hello to him after dinner, when I passed him on his way out, but he ignored me. Didn’t even stop.”

Her friend snorted. “The two of you looked cozy on the docks before we set off.”

“That was before he had dinner with the royal family,” said the first maid despondently. “But now he’s all settled in with royalty. He probably thinks he’s too good for the likes of us now.”

“I don’t know what you see in him.”

The first maid pouted. “He’s a war hero!”

“I think his moustache is ridiculous.”

“Alright, but he’s still a war hero . Doesn’t that just give you shivers up and down your spine? I do like soldiers. It’s the uniforms. I’m a sucker for uniforms. They’re just so -- dashing. So patriotic . It’s too bad he’s not wearing his military uniform.” She sighed. “Anyways, what’s the point? He’ll never pay attention to me now .”

“Listen,” said her friend. “The next time you see him, give him a piece of your mind. In fact, do it now. Write him a note and tell him to meet you tomorrow, after the middle prince is done with his lessons. I’ll take it to his door for you --”

“Oh, he’s not here tonight.”

“What? Where is he?”

“He’s going into town, remember? I was telling him about what the bootboy told me. He has a friend who works at the printmaker’s. The circus that’s coming to town -- there’s rumours about how the magician has, you know--” the maid dropped her voice. “ The thing. ”

Intrigued, the Dragon leaned closer to the window. 

“What thing?” said the second maid.

The first maid dropped her voice even further. The Dragon pricked up his ears. “We’re not supposed to talk about it, but it’s the dragon egg . The last remaining one. He’s charging people a few coppers to see it.”

She jerked her head up. 

“Did you see that?”

“See what?”

The first maid squinted upwards. “Nothing, I guess. But for a second there I thought I saw a shadow in that window there. Did you hear footsteps?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

But by the time the two maids came in through the back and peeked up the stairwell (passing an ashen-faced chef on the way) the Dragon of the West was long gone.

***

The Dragon of the West went to the stables and got a mongoose-lizard too, but a much sleeker and prettier one than the one The Carp borrowed. The saddle was festooned with ribbons and silk tassels; on the road, they flew in the wind behind him and looked like a streak of fire. If it was during the day, he would have looked like a very slow meteor, or maybe like a paper kite version of a real dragon. As it was during the night, no one saw.

Setting off this late in the evening, he missed both The Carp and the farmer’s wagon on the roads.

***

So these are the three parties: our three bright young sparks, The Carp, and the Dragon of the West. They descended one after another on the town on Ember Island.

Chapter Text

After dinner, Ursa-who-will-become-Noriko sat down at her dressing room mirror and stared at her reflection in a gloomy silence. She couldn’t recognize the woman staring back at her. 

Recently she had noticed some fine lines at the corners of her eyes, and there were two furrows in the middle of her brow that wouldn’t go away. The woman in the mirror was getting older. Ursa-who-will-become-Noriko was surprised by how much that bothered her. She didn’t know why. She never thought herself a vain person. 

In the past people told her that she was a beautiful woman, but she did not feel beautiful. The woman in the mirror had a nose that was a regular nose; her eyes were regular eyes. She couldn’t convince herself this collection of disjointed features came together to make a face at all, much less a beautiful face. But to other people, the pair of eyes floating over a nose floating above a mouth created a regular whole. She thought that people fooled themselves into thinking she was beautiful. 

In the mirror, Ursa-who-will-become-Noriko watched in silence as a maid bustled around the person in the mirror, powdering her face and doing up her hair. A disturbance caught her eye. From the mirror, she watched her husband slide open the door and enter the room. “Where’s Iroh?” he said to her.

“I haven’t seen him since dinner.”

“I have documents I need him to look at -- just like him to disappear at a crucial moment like this.” He waved his hand with irritation; the fire inside an innocent lantern shot up and disintegrated its innocent shell into a mess of ash and burnt paper. “This brother of mine! I checked the stables and a few of the mongoose-lizards are missing. But where could he have possibly gone?”

The maid, hurrying along with a dustpan and broom to clean up the exploded lantern, thought to herself she might have an idea. After all, that was an awfully familiar shadow she saw in the stairwell. But the maid said nothing.

Ursa-who-will-become-Noriko murmured to her. “Once you clean it up you can go. I’ll finish getting ready on my own.”

The maid left.

When Ursa-who-will-become-Noriko was sure she and her husband were alone in the room she said to him,“Is it really happening then? The siege on Ba Sing Se?”

Her husband hummed noncommittally. “When are you off to the theatre again?”

“The carriage will be ready in half an hour, I think. But Ozai -- the siege. I’m asking you: is it real? Were you serious?”

Her husband touched her shoulder and laid an absentminded kiss on her head. “Oh yes,” he said. 

Ursa-who-will-become-Noriko forgot about her discomfort with her own face. She had something else much more important on her mind. “But the children won’t get involved, will they? Ozai, darling, you must promise me that Zuko and Azula won’t get involved in your awful little siege if it happens.”

“Why would they?”

“Promise me,” Ursa-who-will-become-Noriko said. She dug her nails into the meat of her palms. “You have to promise me.”

“They’re still far too young, dear. They won’t come of age for years.”

“But still--”

“But hush now,” her husband said firmly. “Don’t worry yourself.”

He was still touching her shoulder. His hand grew very heavy. 

Ursa-who-will-become-Noriko pressed her lips together and said nothing.

Her husband let go of her shoulder. 

He picked up one of the hair decorations on her vanity table. “Are you going to wear this hairpin to the theatre? It’ll look exquisite with that new dress you have on.” 

She looked at it. The hairpin was made out of beaten gold, decorated with a large ruby surrounded by a cluster of garnets. She didn’t think it looked exquisite -- it looked dark red and bloody, like the glistening heart of a butchered animal. 

“Put it on,” said her husband. 

She put it on.

Her husband nodded with approval. “You look lovely,” he said lightly. “And I think this hairstyle really suits you. Wearing it up like this really takes years off your age.”

She dug her nails a little deeper into her palm.“Just promise me, Ozai. You have to promise. Don’t let Zuko and Azula go to Ba Sing Se. They’re just children.”

“Royalty are never children.”

“But darling, you know how our Zuko is. He’s delicate . You can’t take him to the Earth Kingdom. And think about how it’ll look to everyone if you take Azula but not her older brother. Ozai, you’ll never hear the end of it for years . Think about how unbearable family dinners will be. Leave them both at home, please .”

Her husband looked thoughtful. Ursa-who-will-become-Noriko held her breath. 

“I’ll think about it.”

Ursa-who-will-become-Noriko exhaled.

He leaned and kissed her again on the top of the head. “Have a lovely time at the theatre, dear. I wish I could go with you, but -- you know. This dreadful war business takes up so much of one’s time.”

***

In their own rooms in another wing of the house, the wife of the Dragon of the West was also sitting in front of her mirror. She didn’t get the chance to extract a similar promise from her husband about her own son -- she couldn’t find him. The Dragon of the West had vanished right after dinner. 

In any case, even if he was there, she was too exhausted from having an opinion earlier to have done anything more taxing than say vague things about the weather. 

(Poor Lu Ten didn’t know it, but he was doomed).

Alone, the wife dabbed some medicinal ointment on her temples and said nothing.

***

Meanwhile, in town, a tired dragon-moose pulling a wagon came to a stop. Three energetic children hopped off. 

The driver pocketed his silver coin and vowed silently to never stop for a child again. He and his wife never had children of their own. For a long time they yelled at each other over minor mishaps and ignored each other over the dinner table. Each of them blamed the other one for their failure. But now he realised something: kids were awful. He spent the silver coin on a pretty potted orchid for his wife and silently vowed to apologize to her when he got home.

The sparks were long gone. They had forgotten about the driver and his wagon the second they were no longer in sight, too dazzled by the noise and colours of the town nightlife.

They happened to sneak out on the first night of the Fire Days festival: when all the merchants put the best and most wonderful wares out for perusal, the townspeople put on their brightest clothes, and every type of amusement in the world could be sampled at one’s pleasure on Ember Island. 

The three sparks barely knew where to look. They’d been in town before, but under the tight guard of nannies and servants, barricaded away in red silk palanquins. Now they wandered the streets freely and goggled at everything. Even Azula looked overwhelmed. They had been raised in luxury since birth, and they were so accustomed to it that they hardly knew what the term meant. They just knew that the bustling town, with its various and not always pleasant sights and sounds and odours, was very unlike everything that they had seen before. 

Great vapours of steam and smoke wafted into the air: they smelled of salt and sugar, oil and meat.  Everywhere they looked were people, animals, other children. Stalls sold food that none of the three royal children had seen before: grilled meats, crackers shaped like plum blossoms, great blobs of rice paste served on wood chips, where one could pay to lick off the paste before handing the wood chips back again. There were bulging bags of chemically-tinted candy, oily sticks of grilled fish and squid, dumplings the size of prayer beads, skewered on bamboo sticks and sweating sugary syrup. The stall-keepers were also sweating. They swore and cried out things like Fresh fish here! Get your fresh fish!, and Three rice cakes for a copper! Three for a copper!, and F uck off, you greedy little bastards! (The last one was directed at the crowds of grimy children clustered around them, boldly waiting for the opportunity to shoplift one of these delicious treats the second the stall-keeper turned his back).

Zuko’s mouth fell open in amazement. His pinched, sallow face was glowing with excitement. “It looks amazing,” he breathed.

Azula pulled his sleeve. “Don’t get distracted! C’mon!”

She tugged Zuko and Lu Ten along. Thankfully, it wasn’t hard to find the circus where the dragon egg was supposed to be; there were flyers everywhere. The children only had to follow the flow of people, which pulled them closer and closer to the docks where the circus caravans had pitched up the giant tent.

They drew closer to the egg.

***

The Carp meandered through the town and eventually meandered his way to a noodle bar. He entered and went straight to the back, to a shadowy door next to the kitchens. He knocked.

“Who knocks at the guarded gate?” a voice asked from the other side.

“It’s me.”

“I asked, who knocks at the guarded gate?”

The Carp groaned. He could never keep these codenames and passwords straight. “One who has tasted the mysterious grape?”

“No.”

“The enigmatic lychee-nut?”

“No.”

“You know me,” The Carp said, exasperated. “It’s—“

The door opened and the man inside pulled him in by the arm. “The White Lotus opens wide to those who know her secrets,” he said to The Carp. He thought for a second, then added, “Though it helps to know her passwords as well, don’t you think?”

The two men pulled up chairs and sat down at the table. The co-conspirator had a name, but The Carp wasn’t supposed to use that name out loud; he shouldn’t even be thinking about it, really. It was all part of the secret-ness of their secret organization. 

“Evening, Swordmaster,” The Carp said instead.

It was a silly nickname, but the secret organizations run by men -- which is most of them, and the White Lotus was no exception -- they always used silly nicknames. They had silly little robes as well. They had to. Without passwords and robes, what would even be the point of joining a secret conspiracy?

***

On his dragon-moose, the Dragon of the West didn’t notice three young sparks mixed in with the crowd. He galloped right by them on the street. The three sparks, still dazzled by the sights of the festival, failed to notice him too.

The Dragon got to the circus in record time. He went right by the ticket-seller and demanded to see whoever was in charge in a polite but firm voice. Someone protested; the Dragon of the West ignored them. 

Eventually the ringmaster came to see what the commotion was about. He was a skinny and anxious man wearing a ridiculous hat and an even more ridiculous moustache. The moustache was fake and stuck on with spirit gum, and it trembled over his upper lip as he spoke. “Did I hear you right? The Crown Prince? The Crown Prince ?”

“That’s right.”

The fake moustache vibrated at a high frequency. “Really?”

“Really,” said the Dragon of the West firmly.

The moustache trembled even faster. “Is that really the truth?”

“I can tell you the truth, but a fool can no more comprehend the truth than a spoon tastes the flavour of the soup.” The Dragon was really pleased with that line. He came up with it himself. 

The ringmaster laughed, and then stuck his moustache back on with a bit of spit. “Good thing the two of us are no fools, eh? Soup! Ha-ha. I’ll be sure to remember that. Very wise.”

Forgetting himself, he clapped the other man on the shoulder. 

The Dragon looked at it. He didn’t say anything, but the ringmaster quailed. It was like running full-tilt into the brick wall of vague pleasantness.  Shaking, he withdrew the offensive hand from the Dragon’s shoulder. The Dragon gave him a pleasant smile. “I heard you have a dragon’s egg. Why don’t you show me?”

“Of...of course,” said the ringmaster, and then hastened to add, “Your highness.” 

The ringmaster fell over himself to show the Crown Prince around. The two of them wound their way through the patch of dirt behind the main show tent. The track, recently worn, snaked its way past a few hastily put-up sheds and animal cages. A group of lithe young acrobats were outside warming up, spinning plates or handkerchiefs in the air or tying themselves in massive knots. On the far side of the tents was the Tent of Curiosities. An old woman sat outside, rattling a tin box. When the Dragon approached, she pointed at a sign next to her: THREE COPPERS FOR ADMISSION. 

The tin box went rattle, rattle . The Dragon ignored it. 

He stepped in. “Tell everyone else here to get out.”

The ringmaster hovered behind him like an anxious shadow. “Uh--” he said.

The Dragon gave him another look, and the ringmaster folded like one of his own circus tents after the show’s over. He bustled everyone out. People grumbled they weren’t getting their three coppers’ worth, but what could they do? They were dismissed.

“Now show me the egg,” said the Dragon.

There was lots of junk in the Tent of Curiosities, but the ringmaster knew his way around. He led the Dragon around a pile of jumbled bones and some old waterbending scrolls and some disgusting looking paintings and other devices with lots of gears and cogs on the outside and then something small and furry sitting in a cage. He went to a plinth covered with a heavy cloth and pulled it off with a flourish. “The egg,” said the ringmaster. “Ta-da!”

A long, long silence.

“Ah,” said the Dragon.

“It must be very exciting,” the ringmaster said. “The Dragon of the West, looking at the very last dragon’s egg in existence. Ha ha! Must be quite a feeling.”

“Where did this come from?” said the Dragon.

“Truth is, no one knows. I bought it off a sailor, so who knows where he got it from? Nice man, though, for a sailor. He said he won it in a card game. He lost all his money in the first round, lost it all, and then bet his iguana-parrot in the second round and won it back, with this little trinket to spare.”

“Interesting.”

“Yes, only the iguana-parrot escaped from its cage the next day, and the sailor was devastated. Said it was worth ten of these silly eggs.”

“Really?”

“He said it could say the uncanniest things. Claimed it could practically tell you your future, that bird. One of a kind.”

“Lovely,” said the Dragon of the West, who was not listening. 

An idea had just occurred to him. He lifted his nose and gave a few theatrical sniffs. 

“Listen, do you smell that?”

“Smell what?”

The Dragon sniffed again. “The smoke. I think I smell something burning. You don’t think something’s on fire, do you?”

The ringmaster paled; a circus’s worst fear was fire. The tops of their canvas tents were usually coated in paraffin wax to keep the rain off. When combined with a few hundred spectators, dozens of nervous and high-strung performers in varying states of sobriety, all in a country where one in every few dozen people walking around could conjure sparks by sneezing, the whole thing was a nightmare waiting to ignite. “I don’t smell any smoke.”

“But I do.”

The ringmaster started trembling. His moustache fell off completely and fluttered to the ground like a small dead butterfly. “I’ll be right back!” he called out nervously. “Right back!” 

“Go on,” said the Dragon.

He scrambled outside. A few minutes later, when he came back (there had been no fire after all, thank Agni), the Dragon was long gone.

And so was the egg.

***

Inside the backroom of a noodle bar, the co-conspirator leaned across the table. “Anyways, Prince Iroh.”

The Carp didn’t groan out loud, but it was close. 

“What do you think of him?”

“He’s very…modern. Progressive, I suppose. He says a lot of clever things. He invited me to sit with the royal family at dinner. That’s something. But he’s…” 

He stopped. He didn’t know how to explain how he felt towards the Dragon of the West. Because hadn’t he shown nothing but kindness to The Carp? What could The Carp even say? He’d had an uncomfortable dinner? He’d been lucky to receive an invitation, after all. “But he’s the Crown Prince. I’m not sure he’d ever join a secret organization working against his own country.”

“But if he did, Iroh will be a good addition to the cause. So we have to try.”

The co-conspirator said this in a very matter-of-fact, straightforward way. He was tall and slim, and he looked like he was carved out of straight lines: he had a straight nose and a straight chin and two straight dark eyebrows over dark eyes that had a way of looking at things and people straight-on. He also had a straight-forward way of speaking that reassured everyone who met him that they’re getting the straight deal. He was just like that: adroit in every way, and his name reflected that fact.He had a name that was just as straight and useful and sharp as the rest of him, like a knife or a blade. 

In his agitated state, The Carp almost used it. “It’ll be nice if we can get him,” he said. “But still, Pi--”

His co-conspirator cut in. “At the end of the day only one thing matters: we need a better piece on the game table. We need someone in the royal family.”

“Why would the Dragon of the West even want to join us?”

The co-conspirator gave him a look. “Why did you join?”

“Hated the navy. Thought I might as well.”

“That’s it?”

The Carp shrugged.

“I don’t think ‘might as well’ would work for Prince Iroh. Is that it? So your report is that he’s not worth the White Lotus’s time?”

The Carp clasped his hands in front of him and sighed.

Here was another reason why The Carp was a good nickname: The Carp wasn’t just fish-like in his appearance. He was a complainer by nature: he enjoyed nothing and carped about everything. He hated lots of things, including firebending, which was quite a knotty problem for someone who was a firebender. His problem, which Azula had sensed but couldn’t express yet (she was only eight), was that he just didn’t like himself very much. It made it difficult for him to like anything or indeed, almost anyone else.

But despite everything -- he liked his co-conspirator. 

It was very unexpected, how much he liked him. He liked the other man’s straight nose and his straight eyebrows and his handsome profile; he hungered for the co-conspirator’s knife-sharp attention.

And so, seized with the irrational desire to not disappoint the object of his silly little crush, The Carp made a mistake. 

“Maybe he does deserve a chance -- Prince Iroh,” he said reluctantly. “They’re all rotten, but I think he’s the best of the bunch. Maybe he is worth a shot. I suppose we can try . I certainly can’t think of anyone else. But still. This wasn’t my idea.”

***

“This wasn’t my idea,” Zuko hissed. “Azula, you’re the one who planned this. Why didn’t you bring enough money?”

The three sparks stood in front of the Tent of Curiosities. Rattle, rattle , went the tin box. 

“Three coppers,” said the old woman. “No money, no entry.”

Lu Ten stepped up. “Excuse me, but do you have any idea who we are? I don’t think we should have to pay--”

His two cousins rarely agreed on anything, but when it came to their cousin they sometimes formed a loose alliance. Moving at the same time, Zuko and Azula tackled him from behind and wrestled him to the ground. The three children rolled around in the dirt.

“Shut up!” panted Zuko. 

“You can’t just tell someone who we are,” said Azula. 

Lu Ten rolled his eyes. “Get off my arm.”

“Only if you promise to stop being an idiot.”

“Fine.”

The three of them got up. 

Lu Ten brushed off some dust from his tunic. “Any bright ideas then, Azula? I mean, we need nine coppers. Should we ask someone for some? I mean, where does one get money?”

He was like his father. When he did think of money, it was in the abstract sense: it was important, of that there was no doubt. It was an invisible force that was quite important for lots of people’s lives, a force that could be harnessed for one’s own purposes. But money in the concrete sense, in the sense of counting coins and paying debts, was completely outside of his concern. There was something a little vulgar about it, something not at all – pleasant and noble and grand. 

It was lucky for him that Azula was there and she was handling these things. She thought hard for a second, and then took off her hairpin. “Here,” she said to the old woman. “Take this. This must be worth at least a silver piece.”

The old woman held the pin up to the lamplight. It wasn’t ostentatious by royal standards, but it was made of gold and decorated with pearls. It was worth a lot more than a silver piece, but it was better to not let these snotty kids know. She dropped it into an inside pocket, and then nodded and let the kids pass.

Inside the tent, the kids poked around the objects. Most of it looked old and disgusting.

“What a load of junk!” exclaimed Azula after a few minutes. “What’s this supposed to be?” She pointed at a cage with something small and furry on the inside. The cage was solely there for effect: the thing inside was long dead. 

Lu Ten read the placard out loud: “ Authentic Southern Water Tribe Child, South Pole -- hey, look at this? It looks awful.” 

Zuko squinted at the thing. It looked to him to be a skeleton about the size of a monkey, hastily stuffed into a badly sewn fursuit and then arranged so it was crouched over itself. It gave off the stench of nostril-burning chemicals. He hastened on.

After a few minutes Azula spoke up. “Where’s the dragon’s egg?”

“No idea.”

“I haven’t seen it.”

They circled the tent a few more times, but none of them saw anything that resembled an egg. The three sparks went back outside to where the old woman was sitting. Azula, as the self-appointed spokesperson of their group, approached her and tugged at her sleeve.

Selling tickets was boring work; the old lady had half-fallen asleep. She jostled into consciousness with a start. “Huh? What’s happening? Wadja want?”

“Excuse me,” Azula said sweetly. “But I heard that there was a dragon’s egg here. Is that true? Do you work here? Do you know where it is?”

“Dunno.”

“ Dunno as in, you don’t know if you’ve had one, or dunno as in, you don’t know if there was ever an egg here?”

“Dunno.”

Lu Ten jumped in, impatient with the progress of the conversation. “So there’s no egg here?”

“Used to have somethin’, but now the Dragon’s took it, hasn’t he? Tricked us and stolen it and now he’s done a runner.”

“A dragon ?” said Azula and Zuko at the same time.

“Yep.”

“A runner?” they chorused again.

The old woman spat on the ground. “That’s how the rich and powerful are. Don’t ever think about the rest of us, do they?” She shook her hand that was holding the tin box.  Rattle, rattle. “Listen kid, I said what I said, now scram. I have work to do.”

Azula glared at her; the old woman ignored it. 

Lu Ten tried to cajole her by smiling sweetly at her; she ignored that too. 

Zuko said nothing and did nothing, which suited both him and the old woman just fine.

Out of ideas, the kids fell back in a huddle. 

“I hate being a kid,” Azula said. “I hate it. I hate not being taken seriously. It’s driving me crazy.”

Zuko was getting worried. “What do we do now? Should we head back?”

He looked at his sister and his cousin, they looked back at him. For once, both Azula and Lu Ten were at a loss for ideas.

Zuko was unused to being the one who made decisions. The responsibility made him anxious. But the memory of the brightly-lit stalls with their great offerings of greasy, gaudily coloured foods called out to him. He swallowed down his fear and said, “Since we’re out here anyways, maybe…we could get something to eat? ”

As soon as he said it out loud, all of them realized how long ago dinner was.

“Okay.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Zuko sagged with relief. 

It was decided. The three sparks turned and headed back into town.

***

The Dragon of the West was also getting hungry. He stood outside a street of noodle shops, debating whether or not to go, when suddenly -- a familiar fishy-looking man stepped out of one of the doors.

“Oh goodness,” the Dragon said, surprised, “it’s you.”

The Carp, not expecting to meet the object of his secret discussion so soon after his secret meeting, looked up and did a double take. His mouth gaped open like a fish.

After a few hideously awkward moments, the Dragon of the West cleared his throat. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Where?” 

“In town.”

“It’s my night off.”

“I know it is.”

“I can go where I want, for whatever reason.”

“Right. 

The Dragon of the West wished he hadn’t stopped to acknowledge his nephew’s firebending master after all, no matter how interesting the man was as a topic of conversation at dinner. The man seemed belligerent for some reason. “Well, best be on my way–“

The Carp’s co-conspirator also stepped out of the doorway. “Oh, hello. Is that you, Prince Iroh? ”

“Are you from somewhere? Do I know you?” said the Dragon of the West. He squinted. The paper lanterns outside the bar made patchy spots of light; a breeze went by and the one ray lit up the handsome lines of the co-conspirator’s face. The Dragon snapped his fingers. “Piandao! Is that you?”

“Oh,” said the co-conspirator. “Yes, it’s me.”

The Carp blinked in surprise. He felt betrayed. What was the point of all their cloak-and-dagger stuff of their secret organization if his co-conspirator was just going to admit to his real name like that?

The Dragon of the West snapped his fingers again; a few errant sparks flew to the ground and set a nearby oil barrel on fire.  “Of course! Great old family, the Pians. Don’t you have an uncle too? Name of  Jian or something like that. Wasn’t he a field-marshal?”

“Just a general. That’s the one on my mother’s side. You’re probably thinking of my great-uncle on my dad’s side; he’s the field-marshal. Or maybe my second-cousin-once-removed.” 

“Of course, and your cousin–“

“Recently married into the Xu’s in Caldera last year, yes.”

The co-conspirator’s manner was becoming less straightforward by the second; it was curving sideways into something much more charming, and much more crooked. Even his voice was changing, his vowels were rounding out like gold coins. A bored little drawl crept in.

“Good family,” said the Dragon. “Just a little–“

“A little too upstart?”

“I wouldn’t like to call anyone names.”

“Mother always thought they were a bit too new money. Made it all in timber, if I recall. They also just purchased the most awful pile in the country -- wants everyone to believe it’s late classical, but if you ever see the windows...Kyoshi-era at the most.”

The Dragon laughed. “Your family’s country house isn’t too bad. A castle, wasn’t it?”

This was so astonishing that The Carp cut in. “Your family has a castle?”

“It’s a pile of rocks , really,” the co-conspirator said. He managed to sound slightly apologetic about the fact. “It’s just one of those draughty old things, the castle; some Avatar gifted it to my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather ages ago. The garden’s not bad and the waterfall in the back is nice, but we really ruined it all when we put the forge in. But still. Early classical counts for something . You’re too kind, Iroh.”

The Dragon gave the co-conspirator a smile. The co-conspirator smiled back. Between the Dragon of the West and him now passed a look. It was a look of recognition and acceptance. It was communication beyond just the words that were spoken. It was accompanied by the subtle air of caring very hard about not caring. In the end, it was the silken password of privilege and money, and it was a million times more selective and secretive than all the secret orders and conspiracies in the world. 

The co-conspirator said, “Why don’t you sit down for a bit, Iroh? I think we’ll have a lot to talk about.”

They went back inside and sat down. The Carp, unsure if the invitation included him as well, hovered around awkwardly. He thought the Dragon had forgotten about him, until the man turned around and beckoned him over with a crooked finger. The Carp gritted his teeth and came closer.

“Listen: you’re not too busy, are you?” asked the Dragon.

The Carp perked up. He didn’t like spending time with royalty, but it was nice to be invited, if only so he could turn it down to make a point. “I’m heading back to the house soon. Sorry, but--”

“Perfect! Do you mind doing me a favour? I have a package here that I need to bring back to the summer house as soon as possible. Can you take it with you when you’re heading back?”

The Carp opened his mouth. Then closed it. Then opened it again. He glanced at the mysterious cloth-wrapped bundle. “But it’s my night off. I’m off work.”

“I wouldn’t call it work,” said The Dragon pleasantly. “You’re heading back anyways, aren’t you? This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now, that’s when work becomes play. Besides, you’re not doing anything, are you?”

The Carp wasn’t sure how to explain that doing nothing was precisely his intention for the rest of his night off. 

The co-conspirator cleared his throat. “Well put, Iroh! How philosophical–”

The Carp shot the co-conspirator a wounded look. He had held out a small hope that the co-conspirator would take his side.  

The co-conspirator shot him a look in return. He mouthed, silently, I got this now.

The Dagon of the West, preoccupied by looking for the waiter, missed all of the back-and-forth looks flying like arrows over his head. He ordered a round of drinks. The Carp noticed it was only for two people. 

He gave up. As he was leaving with the stupid cloth-wrapped package in his hand (surprisingly heavy; he wondered what was inside), he heard his co-conspirator say, in his new un-straightforward way:

“Iroh -- did I hear you right that you enjoy Pai Sho? Because there’s a little club I’m in that could always use new members --  nothing too old-fashioned , of course, just a bit of fun between enthusiasts. We meet up every now and then for a bit of a game and a chat. It could get a bit dense, lots of people talking about philosophy, beauty, truth -- that sort of thing. It sounds stuffy, but don’t get it wrong, it’s all very modern and innovative. You strike me as a modern man; I think you’ll fit in very well with the rest of us. Very well indeed. You’ll see.”

***

Walking back to town, the three sparks passed a raggedy group of men sitting against a low brick wall that was plastered over with flyers.

“What are they?” whispered Zuko. He pointed.

It took Lu Ten and Azula a moment to see what Zuko was talking about. Then they did: the men wore clothes in murky shades of green that blended into the gloom. Their faces were sunburned and sullen. Their hair was not gathered into proper topknots but hung instead in greasy braids down their backs. They sat against the wall in various positions: some hunched over little wooden stools; others cross-legged with scraps of paper between them and the dirty ground.

“Colonists,” Lu Ten whispered back. “Workers from the Earth Kingdom.”

The kids were the only people who seemed to have noticed them. All the pedestrians coming towards them on the street all found their gaze sliding elsewhere: towards the lanterns on the other side of the street, for instance, or the nearby row of stone planter pots. Propped up behind these men, up against the wall, were their tools of trade: brooms, rakes, a rusty wheelbarrow. One man stopped to tut at the way the wheelbarrow handlebars blocked the entrance of a narrow alleyway, but he said nothing to the wheelbarrow’s owner next to it. It was like he found it easier to see the objects than to see the humans squatting in front of them, what with their dark clothes and their dark expressions. 

“They look so…” Zuko trailed off. He had grown up in luxury; he had no word for it. Consequently, he also had no word for its opposite. He settled on: “They look dirty.”

“Well, of course they are,” said Lu Ten, who was older and more sophisticated than his cousin.

“Why?”

Lu Ten shrugged. “My dad says our society depends on people like them. They’re very important.”

“Really?” 

Zuko sneaked a peek over his shoulder. The men didn’t look important to Zuko; they looked tired. Tired and dirty. 

Lu Ten said, “My dad says they do the work that we all depend on. They’re the ones who keep society running. He says they’re the real heroes of the Fire Nation, not whatever general who captured some stupid small town in a place no one had even heard of before.”

“Oh,” said Zuko, and then, “What work?”

“What?”

Zuko said slowly, “You said they do the work we depend on. Like what?”

“Dangerous and difficult stuff,” Lu Ten said airily. “Something like, I don’t know -- cleaning or street-sweeping or factory stuff. You know. Dirty stuff.”

“Do you think they’re earthbenders?” Azula asked. She was much more interested in combat than her brother and cousin. “Do you think they might get violent and throw rocks around?”

Lu Ten hesitated. He wasn’t about to admit ignorance in front of his two younger cousins. “I doubt it. Earthbenders don’t need to come here to find work. They’re just muddy colony commoners. My dad says they’re pillars of society. Pillars go into the dirt, that’s what they do.”

Zuko nodded.

Lu Ten added, “Just remember they’re still heroes. They have very important jobs.”

Azula, who had been walking faster than the two boys, looked back and stamped her foot. “Hurry up, you two! Why are you so slow ?” 

“Coming!” Lu Ten called, and put on a burst of speed. Zuko had to skip a few steps to catch up to his cousin’s long strides. 

But before they turned the corner, he couldn’t resist sneaking another glance. He had never seen poverty before. It made an impression on him. One of the men scratched his nose, and Zuko noticed with a shudder of revulsion that his fingernails were black with filth. What was worse was that his shoes had a hole. From the hole, a gnarled and blackened toe poked out.

Zuko shuddered, and hurried on.

***

The Carp hurried on through the streets as well. He was so distracted with thoughts of his co-conspirator that he bumped – literally bumped -- into some poor kid.

Zuko, preoccupied with licking a cone of shaved ice and sweet syrup, was not looking where he was going. 

The darkness of the evening did not help. Scrawny child collided with solid adult midsection. Both bounced back to land on the dirty street. “Oof!”

The Carp was about to help up this unfortunate little urchin when he noticed a pair of piss-yellow eyes looking up at him. 

He jumped in the most un-carp-like way. It seemed to him that the town tonight was lousy with royalty. He would not have been surprised if the Fire Lord himself popped out from behind a nearby row of wilting palm trees.

He glanced around wildly. No Fire Lord, but across the street he spied the other two royal children, all of them looking a good deal scruffier since the last time he’d seen them.

He gave out a strangled cry. “You!”

Azula and Lu Ten looked up from their own shaved ices. The four of them stared at each other in mute shock.  

Azula recovered first. “The Carp!” 

By now The Carp noticed something else: in the collision, he had dropped the bundle he was carrying. The wrapped thing was rolling down the cobblestones.

The three sparks followed his gaze.

One end of the wrapping cloth snagged on a jagged stone and came free from its fastening. Slowly, the whole thing unfurled like a long, lapping tongue.

An enormous white ovoid-thing emerged and continued wobbling along. 

“ The egg !” cried four different people at once.

A beat, and then four pairs of legs accelerated at once to chase after the dragon’s egg, which continued rolling down, down, down the sloping street. 

Unbelievably, Zuko got lucky. He was standing the closest to that end of the street, and he got there first. 

He picked up the egg. Behind him, he heard Azula and Lu Ten and The Carp approach.

“Don’t drop it, kid,” said The Carp.

“Give it over!” said Azula. “Let me see!”

Zuko paused. The egg was surprisingly heavy. The surface was smooth and white. It felt nice in his hands. 

But something wasn’t right.

“Oh,” said Zuko.

***

The Carp was not expecting his snotty little charge to tear off like that, but a small part of him had to admire the agility. Zuko didn’t have any talent for firebending, but he could move surprisingly quickly.

Before the other three could react, he had already taken off down a side alley, around a stack of empty crates, across a thoroughfare, and was tearing his way to freedom with the precious dragon’s egg clutched in his arms.

“You’re all driving me crazy!” Azula hollered, and then took off after him.

“Wait!” Lu Ten cried, breaking into a run too. “Wait for me!”

“I hate kids,” The Carp said to no one in particular, and took off in a jog too.

***

Like this, in single file with Azula chasing Zuko, Lu Ten chasing Azula, The Carp reluctantly following all three of them -- the group made their comical way all the way to the edge of the water, on one of Ember Island’s famous beaches.

“Give it back!” said Azula.

“No!”

“Don’t make it harder for yourself, Zuko.”

“Back off!”

“Give me the egg!”

“I’m warning you, Azula! If you come any closer I’m telling Mom about this.”

“What are you going to say? That you took something and don’t want to give it back? That you sneaked out at night when you’re not supposed to? Don’t be stupid, Zuzu.”

Azula lit up a fire in one of her hands, and the flickering light of her fireball illuminated Zuko’s pale, pinched face. “No!” he cried.

Lu Ten coughed. “Guys, maybe you should both calm down--”

“Shut up!” screamed both his cousins.

“Give me the egg,” said Azula.

“No!”

“Why?”

Zuko screamed wordlessly: a long, whiny note that dangled in the air. He took a deep breath. “Why do you need to... to ruin everything? Why did you make me come here?”

“Just give it to me! I deserve it! I want to see!”

Zuko took a half-step back and wrapped his other arm around the egg protectively. He glanced around. Where could he hide? There was nothing here: just the crashing sea, the jagged slices of beachrock at the shoreline, and stretching around them the vast open strips of sand. Lu Ten was standing a few paces back -- he was no help; there was no one around to tell him what to do. 

The Carp was next to Lu Ten, and he also said nothing and did not step in. 

Zuko’s chest heaved. It was time to make a stand. With the hand not holding the egg, he shot two fireballs at Azula, which she deflected. Then Azula came forward; she feigned right, actually ducked left, and tripped Zuko as he clumsily lunged.

It was very well done by Azula. Very comical. Lu Ten couldn’t help it. He laughed. Maybe everything would have been different if he hadn’t, but he did, and Zuko heard it. He had hit the sand with a muffled thud, and now he scrambled up with another incoherent scream. Insensate with rage, with humiliation, he took off at a run towards the water, Azula hot on his heels. 

She caught up to him and leaped, her hands ablaze. She was quicker and better than her brother; in a fair fight, in a normal arena or a practice ring she would have won. But this wasn’t a fair fight: this was two children grappling with each other on a dark night on a beach of dark, slippery sand. In the gloom of the evening, Azula missed a step and tripped over a length of driftwood, and Zuko saw his chance. He jumped, tackled his sister, and then tangled a fist in her hair that was coming loose from its knot. He yanked, and at the same moment, Azula wrenched her head to the side and sank her sharp baby teeth into his wrist.

Now both of them screamed.

But even through the pain, through the reflexive scream she made as a response to physical pain, Azula was also laughing. Her brother was a delight to provoke: he always fought back, but never well. Like all good bullies, she could sense when someone was the perfect victim.

The egg slipped free, but neither child noticed.

...and the egg wobbled and rolled down the slippery sands...

...and The Carp and Lu Ten were running up, but they were still seconds away from catching up with them...

...and Azula was still laughing...

...and The Carp realized what was going to happen first...

...and the egg rolled down the embankment they were on and down, down, down towards the jagged rocks.

...and Zuko grabbed a strand of hair and yanked, pulling away bloody bits of scalp along with it. But Azula was still laughing...

...and now, behind The Carp, Lu Ten also realized what was going to happen, and his mouth opened, and he almost, almost had an original thought -- namely, that maybe it was a bad idea not to do something earlier…

...and The Carp was yelling...

...and the egg finished its last ever roll, and it fell

Down

                Down 

                                Down

                                                                                                And the eggshell split with a loud crack.

***

A brief interlude:

The Old Man laid happily alone in his bed, undisturbed and unaware of the convoluted events happening outside of the house.

His dreaming mind was subsumed under lovely sequences of fire: dying dragons and dancing shapes the colour of brass and gold; great brazier of flames burning in front of a golden throne, then lanterns, their light falling over signed treaties and statements of surrender, then coal fires, stoked in the boilers of steamships and war machines -- all of it so bright, so warm in the Old Man’s dreaming head. Ah, these little fires that fuel the march of civilization!

To the war! To the Fire Nation! To the modern era!

Chapter Text

Azula stared at the eggshell fragments. “You broke it!”

“So what?” panted Zuko. “Now none of us have it. Happy?”

“YOU BROKE IT.”

“Who cares?” demanded Zuko. The hot flush of anger shielded his normal fear; all he felt was an ugly pleasure.

Azula leaped, her hands ablaze. She was quicker and better than her brother; in a fair fight, in a normal arena or a practice ring she would have won. But this wasn’t a fair fight: this was two children grappling with each other on a dark night on a beach of dark, slippery sand. In the gloom of the evening, Azula missed a step and tripped over a length of driftwood, and Zuko saw his chance. He jumped, tackled his sister, and then tangled a fist in her hair that was coming loose from its knot. He yanked, and at the same moment, Azula wrenched her head to the side and sank her sharp baby teeth into his wrist.

Now both of them screamed.

But even through the pain, through the reflexive scream she made as a response to physical pain, Azula was also laughing. He was the perfect victim: he always fought back, but never well. This made him her favourite person to provoke.

The Carp broke up the fight. “That’s enough now,” he said. It gave him no pleasure to watch children tear other to pieces. “It’s time for you all to go home.”

***

Zuko’s father’s name was Ozai, but most people called him the Second Prince. That really annoyed him.

For one thing, it made an obvious truth even more obvious: that he was always second to the first prince, whom everyone called the Crown Prince, and then later, the Dragon of the West. The Second Prince was second to be born, second to prove himself, second in everything. He would have been the second to kill a dragon as well, except his older brother got there ahead of him and rudely butchered off last one. In that regard he robbed the Second Prince of the chance to even be second in that.

…just as well, because Zuko’s father would hate to be known as the Second Dragon of the West for the rest of his life.  What Zuko’s father would really like, what he dreamed about sometimes, was to have a new title altogether. Forget dragons. He would kill something even bigger and better, like a lion-turtle or a phoenix, though he wasn’t sure if any of them still existed.

He could be called Phoenix King or Phoenix Lord or something. That would have a nice ring to it. Much better than plain old “Dragon of the West”.

Or even, dare he dream, than “Fire Lord”?

Zuko’s father hated being the second child. It was why he favoured his own second child so much. He saw a lot of himself in her. And besides, his son’s face got on his nerves. It was pointy and pale and pinched-looking, without much of a spark, and it usually wore a terrified expression around him. It was a dull face that needed sprucing up, as he sometimes half-joked to his wife. Maybe when he gets older and gets some military experience, their son would have get a few lines or an interesting scar or something, anything to give him a bit of life experience and teach him a few hard lessons.

***

In the Ember Island Theatre, two royal wives sat down for the evening’s performance of Love Amongst the Dragons. Neither of them was paying much attention.

Ursa-who-will-become-Noriko was thinking about her children. She didn’t trust her husband’s promise. She thought that it was very likely her darling little sparks would be sent to the front sooner or later, and there any number of horrible, murderous things might snuff them out: trench foot, firebender’s lung, bands of marauding earthbenders roaming the countryside looking for Fire Nation children to kidnap. Azula might be alright (she was very good at firebending), but her darling Zuko was soft. He must be protected.

Someone had to do something.

The way she saw it, the problem lied with the Old Man: he was mad and senile. He was the one who suggested the siege in the first place. An impossible idea! She had heard that the stone walls there were thicker than a grown tree laid sideways. All the fire in the world couldn’t burn through the impenetrable walled city, everyone said, and she believed it, even though her father-in-law and her husband didn’t. The Old Man really must be going senile. He was becoming a menace. He must be stopped.

Maybe not now, but one day. Yes.

And she would have to destroy him. Women like her – women everywhere – cannot afford to fail. They must seize the opportune moment to inflict as much damage as possible on  their bullies; they must be vicious and cruel; they could not afford to leave them even the chance to retaliate. Desperate times require desperate measures, but women are always desperate, mothers especially.

So how to do it?

How could one enter an impenetrable city?

How could one depose of a reigning monarch?

How could one woman achieve the impossible? How could she beat men at their own game?

The solution came to her as she sat in the darkness, watching the painted actors recite their lines and move across the stage. She couldn’t approach her task head-on as a man would, with fire and brute force. She needed a different way to do things, a slippery and clever way that made up for her disadvantages as a woman.

What she needed, in short, was a trick. A poison, say. Something that could be disguised as something else, a foreign agent that would slip past defenses without being seen, that would get inside a body and worked its power from the inside out. In this way one cunning and daring woman could bring down a king, maybe even a whole city, before their target even knew he were being destroyed.

The Old Man and his sons would call it dishonourable, but they were always saying things like that. Men called most things women had to resort to dishonourable.

(Years later, as Azula adjusted the stolen Kyoshi Warrior headdress on her head and swiped on the chalky face paint, she would suddenly think of her mother for no reason. She would dismiss that thought quickly—she hated thinking about her mother—but the universe couldn’t help but plop that thought into her head. Even the fates love a little bit of situational irony.)

Meanwhile, Azula’s mother was still thinking about her idea. It was a crazy, ingenious idea. But Ursa-who-will-become-Noriko had two great qualities to her that made it possible. The first was that she was tremendously good at these slippery, sideways kind of ideas. The second was that she was a terrible romantic. She believed in destinies, and she could not accept that her destiny was to be the dull, placid mother of two royal children. That was a very dull role to play, something left for a supporting actress would do. But killing Azulon and then going on the run, never to see her children again? That was lead actress stuff. There was a tragic grandeur to it, very romantic indeed.

She didn’t consider how it would feel for her children, to have such a grand lead actress for a mother. She never got to know them growing up, or she might be surprised at how they divided these qualities between them.

Sitting next to her, the wife of the Dragon was also thinking about her child. She wasn’t as clever as her sister-in-law, so her thoughts came much slower. But what she thought was, I really should have spoken up about sending Lu Ten to the siege. People might actually die. She was experiencing something called regret, which was not vague and pleasant at all. Regret was sharp and awful. It made her feel actually ill.

***

The children, plus The Carp, were trudging through the town when suddenly it all became too much to Zuko. His simmering anger was boiling over. He was always the punching bag, inferior in either age or strength or ability to Azula and Lu Ten.  Nothing ever went right for Zuko. Now all he wanted to do was to take great fistfuls of his pain and smear it all over someone else.

They passed by the street with the sullen Earth Kingdom workers. Zuko looked at them. At the wretched look on these men’s faces; the filth; the sight of that black toe. The unfairness of it all. A shudder of revulsion ripped its way up through Zuko’s chest, and then something – it felt salt, nausea, something sticky -- pooled at the bony triangle at the base of his throat and welled up, choking him. He had to do something.

He picked up a rock and threw it at one of the workers. It narrowly missed the man’s head.

“Colony slob!” he yelled. “Colony trash!”

“What are you doing?” hissed Azula. She was not making a moral objection, just surprised at the outburst.

“Give it a rest, Zuko,” Lu Ten said. He was tired and ready for bed.

Zuko couldn’t help it. He started crying for real. Without a word, The Carp scooped him up  before he could hurt himself or anyone else, and carried him the rest of the way out of town.

***

On stage, the actress was delivering her final monologue before the curtains came down for intermission.

The lights went on. The audience burst into applause. The two royal wives clapped as well, daintily and distractedly. Ursa-who-will-become-Noriko was distracted by her slippery thoughts about poison and romance. She told herself that it was all silly conjecture to keep herself occupied through her dull duties, but tucked it away in a little corner of her mind anyways. The wife of the Dragon was distracted by the thought of her son dying.

“Are you alright?” Ursa-who-will-become-Noriko asked her sister-in-law when she looked over at her. “You look a bit peaky.”

“I think we’re making a mistake over this whole Ba Sing Se business,” came the unexpected reply. “I mean, really? Laying siege? Wouldn’t it be quite – unpleasant?”

It was the second opinion the Dragon’s wife had expressed that evening.

She was coming dangerously close to exhibiting a personality.

***

The Dragon’s wife had a secret too. Before she became the Dragon’s wife, when she was plain old Min Soo, she lived at home with her sister and father and mother. They lived in a lovely little brick house with a big courtyard and a fig tree and a handful of chickens that pecked at the fallen fruit after whenever a rainstorm shook the tree. She and her mother used to pick those figs, and she loved her mother’s clean apron, how bright it was in the sun. She wasn’t so delicate and poorly then, scrambling around that little courtyard. Even though her father was the regional administrator and very very important, she played games and did chores like every other child, there in the township of New Azulon.

(Before it was renamed New Azulon, the town was called Changqing. But that was a muddy, unpleasant Earth Kingdom name, and her father and all the other Fire Nation settlers agreed that they’d much rather live somewhere called New Azulon instead, which sounded much cleaner and brighter and more fiery. More civilised. So the old name was wiped out, erased from the map. Gone.)

(Names are important.)

One day, when Min Soo wasn’t so much a girl anymore but not really a woman, not yet, her father and mother summoned her and sat her down and had a serious conversation.

They broke the news with a smile: Min Soo was about to be married to a prince.

“It’s a tremendous honour,” said her father.

Her mother said nothing.

Min Soo nodded.

“But there’s a catch, my daughter,” he added.

He explained. It turned out that Min Soo’s parents was concealing something from her daughter: her mother wasn’t as clean and bright as Min Soo thought she was. It turned out her maternal line was more than a little stained with muddy unpleasantness.

“My wife’s mother – your grandmother – was an earthbender,” said her father. “She never practised it; she changed her name when she married, but that’s what happens when a family has been here for a long time. My father-in-law went a little…native.“

“I never knew that about Grandma. Ma, how come you never said?”

Her mother said nothing now.

Her father cleared his throat. “You can never let anyone know. The royal family has always bred true. They’ve always been firebenders. They will never allow their lineage to be tainted with even a suspicion of anything else.”

“I have to keep this part of myself hidden?” asked Min Soo.

“If anyone finds out, the marriage is over. Your new husband would hate your forever,” said her father.

Her mother said nothing.

“This doesn’t sound like a good idea, Dad,” said Min Soo doubtfully.  “I don’t really want to marry Iroh, I’m sure he doesn’t want to marry me either. We’ve only met that one time at a banquet. We don’t even know each other.”

“It was love at first sight,” her father said firmly. “Prince Iroh made it very clear in his letter to me.”

Min Soo frowned. “I think love at first sight’s a silly idea.”

She really used to be very opinionated, the Dragon’s wife – at least before she became the Dragon’s wife.

“It’s not up to you, darling,” said her father. “I’ve already wrote back giving my permission. It’s a tremendous honour. Try to keep that in mind.”

Min Soo stamped her foot. “Ugh. Mom? Really? You can’t seriously agree with this?”

Her mother said nothing. She was a delicate and poorly woman who never expressed an opinion if she could help it. She discovered long ago it was easier that way.

So that was that.

Min Soo went off and married a prince and became a princess. It was like something from a story.

...and like all stories, it was based on a lie. It was an awful secret for Min Soo to carry inside of her for so long. The wedding and the wedding night happened, and then, in her first year of marriage, her fingers started tingling and she discovered a swollen bump in her abdomen. At first she believed it was the secret that she swallowed; it was growing inside of her like a tumour or a parasite or cancer; it was making her sick, really sick, throwing-up-everyday-sick. But no. It was just a baby. And when she understood that, Min Soo spent every day hoping and praying that the child inside of her would be born with a spark, the surest sign of a real firebender. By then she knew what they did with the babies in the royal family who didn’t have the spark. That was awful already. She couldn’t imagine what they would do with a baby that not only lacked a spark, but who was also all – muddy and common.

A dirt baby, who would probably be put into the dirt where it belonged.

She hoped and prayed and chewed her fingernails to the nub. She fell into fevers and fainted, a lot. Everyone clucked their tongues and said it was a shame how the Crown Prince’s wife was such a frail woman. All the force of her worry and love and hope she had carried for her unborn child had poured into him, all the vitality she ever had went into the baby, and by the end of it she was drained clean. All her life went into him, and after her child was born she went on like a ghost, vague and pleasant and delicate and poorly.

Baby Lu Ten came out, all eight pounds and four ounces of him bright and glowing from day one. He was the nation’s first and foremost spark.

He would have no siblings; his mother was exhausted. She had made a great and mute sacrifice that no one appreciated, and so in time, everyone forgot about her.

People forget about mothers a lot. Stories with dead mothers are a copper piece a dozen these days.

Ah well.

***

A week later, the royal vacation was over. The royal family made their stately procession back down to their private harbourfront, to their gleaming waterfront.

The Carp wasn’t going with them. His job was over for the summer. He didn’t have to be there that morning, but he strolled down to the pier anyways to look at the royal barges. He saw one of his former charges sitting on the edge of a wooden piere, staring out at the water. Before he could think better of it, he came closer and nodded his greeting.

“Morning,” Zuko said.

“Morning.”

They didn’t bow to each other.

“Are you also looking at the boats?” The Carp asked.

Zuko nodded.

“Shouldn’t you be on board already?”

Zuko shrugged. “Maybe.”

The Carp didn’t push it. The two of them stood in silence for awhile.

“Where are you going after this summer?” Zuko asked.

The Carp shot him a surprised look. He had not thought the boy was capable of noticing the affairs of other people enough to ask about them.

“Oh, I’ll be around,” said The Carp. “I’ll be somewhere. I heard parts of the Earth Kingdom is nice this time of year. I think I need a slightly longer vacation.”

“From teaching?”

“From everything,” The Carp said firmly, then coughed, spat into the foaming water crashing against the docks, and shuffled a little awkwardly. The smokestacks of the royal barge coughed as well, wafting streams of black and grey smoke into the air.

“I should go,” mumbled Zuko.

“Yes.”

 “I’m sorry I wasn’t a better student.”

“You weren’t the worst,” said The Carp. “Not the best, obviously, but I’ve taught some real idiots. That’s just the life of a teacher, I’m afraid. Idiots as far as the eye could see. You weren’t the worst. You let your sister push you around too much.”

Zuko blinked. All in all, this was high praise coming from The Carp. “Well, thank you for everything.”

“You’re welcome.”

Neither of the two moved for a moment. They were two people who didn’t like themselves very much, but they almost liked one another just now.

“Wait, Zuko,” said The Carp suddenly. “I’m going to tell you something. A piece of advice about the world. You come from a family of bullies, do you understand?”

Zuko nodded.

“You need to learn how to stand up them. And here’s the thing about bullies: a bully don’t lack self-assurance. Bullies don’t have a secret weakness. Bullies are bullies because that’s who they are. Bullies like showing off; they need an audience. So in that way they’re weak, and that’s why it only takes a little courage to get them to back off. They’re playing a game. You just have to refuse to play.”

Zuko nodded.

“Do you understand me?” said The Carp. “Don’t let other people trap you in their games. You have to be ready not to play. You have to be ready to walk away. Be a deserter.”

Zuko nodded again. “I guess.”

The Carp wanted to say something else, but in the distance, Zuko’s mother poked her head out over the railings, calling his name. The barge was about to leave. Behind her, Azula poked her head between the railings and shouted, “Hurry up, Zu-zu! I want to go home! You’re all driving me crazy!”

Zuko bowed.  “Goodbye, Master Jeong Jeong.”

The Carp bowed back. “Goodbye, Zuko.”

Zuko ran back to his mother, back up the plank and aboard the royal barge.

Jeong Jeong watched him go, and then spat in the waters again. “Best of luck,” he muttered. “You’re going to need it.”

***

Ages ago, back when Jeong Jeong was a boy, he was an alright firebender but an excellent teacher. He taught his younger brother how to hold a flame in his hands, how to control the burning in the middle of a leaf. He had a gentleness that made his younger brother love and worship him.

Then he became a young man and joined up. The Navy taught him a lot about firebending, but in return it beat his softness out of him. Without his natural empathy and patience, he became a good firebender but a mediocre teacher. His younger brother, worshipfully following in his footsteps, also joined the Navy. A grand tragedy occurred: he got himself flattened into a pancake by an angry earthbender. Their mother, distraught, never forgave her oldest son and died before she could change her mind.

This meant that by the time he reached middle-age, he had lived through a lot of rage and destruction and loss. His gentleness was all gone. He became an excellent firebender, but an absolutely lousy teacher. He had no gentleness left

In this way, The Carp learned something valuable about grand tragedies, which was that they did not make you a more interesting person.

***

Suffering had no moral value. Real suffering – not stage suffering – was ugly. It involves disgusting things, snot and shit and blood. People who suffer become unpleasant in specific ways. For instance, the Carp had suffered a lot, and he was no better for it. Suffering only turned him dull and small and unpleasant and boring. Suffering only made him obsessed with himself. People don’t want to look at real suffering; that made them uncomfortable. They don’t want to deal with it. They wanted a play version of it: a tragedy on demand. A tragedy they could handle. They want, in essence, a comfortable lie.

But this is not that comfortable lie.

***

Later on, poor Lu Ten met his Grand and Tragic end. He went to war like his family wanted, and promptly died. The spark was snuffed out, just like that.

He always did as he was told, Lu Ten.

***

Later on, the Old Man’s worst fear came to pass: a member of his own family succeeded in killing him.

“You,” gasped the Old Man, collapsing on the floor of his royal bedchamber as poison coursed through his system. “It was you.”

“Yes, it is me,” his poisoner said. “Surprise.”

“I’ve always suspected you. I knew there was something wrong with you. Traitor! Traitor!”

Ursa-who-would-become-Noriko’s calm expression did not change. That horrible numbness inside of her was coming in useful; it was making her very serene in difficult circumstances.

She stooped down and picked up the teacup the Old Man had dropped to the floor; there was puddle of White Jade tea soaking into the expensive rug. Very bitter, that tea. Very good at disguising various other tastes.

“I could have been an actress, you know,” she told the dying man. “So don't flatter yourself. You’ve never met a real player.”

There was no reply. The Old Man’s fingers spasmed, his mouth frothed over, his pupils dilated under the effect of the toxins. He was choking on his own bile. Animated by the effort of not dying, he looked the most alive he’d been in ages.

Now this was dramatic irony, reflected Ursa-who-would-become-Noriko. She only wished there was an audience there to appreciate it.

***

Later on, the-woman-who-was-now-Noriko made a deal with a spirit and forgot all about her children.

People forget about mothers a lot, and sometimes--sometimes, the process happens in reverse.

***

Later on, something bad (Agni Kai, dad, eye) happened to Zuko when he was thirteen.

He stood up in a stone arena, understood what was happening, and then refused to play.

It had been good advice that The Carp gave him, but it wasn’t perfect advice; it was missing a second half. What The Carp should have thought of was that not all bullies are the same, and while some of them – like Zuko’s sister, say – could be thwarted with courage and strength of character, other bullies, those who were not children but rather adults with real power — those bullies could not be thwarted. Courage was no good; morals were no good; refusing to play only increases the severity of the punishment. Refusing to play just made you an easier victim.

Zuko, the dimmer of the two remaining sparks, realized this too late. He picked the wrong moment to refuse to play.

Shortly after, he was exiled from home and left to make his own way in the world. He was given the task of hunting down a one-hundred-and-twelve-year-old centenarian.

He spent a lot of time brooding in his ship’s cabin over this. He had a tough, almost impossible task. All he had on his side was a fully-crewed warship and unlimited royal funds and allowance papers that allowed him passage everywhere and all his top-level royal education and his uncle who was one of the deadliest firebenders in the world and who had latched onto Zuko as a replacement for his own dead, extinguished spark.

These were all the resources young Zuko had. Nothing, really. He was pretty much alone.

***

Later on, Azula sat down on a stone throne.

“Don't flatter yourself,” she said to a man called Long Feng. “You were never even a player.”

She had just done something no one else in her family could have done. She entered an impenetrable city and deposed of its reigning monarch. But the one person in the world could have appreciated the dramatic irony had already forgotten about her daughter.

***

Later on, Zuko and Azula’s dad, the second Crown Prince, had his wish come true, if only for a little while. He became the Phoenix Lord. But that was very short-lived. An one-hundred-and-twelve-year-old centenarian came along and put a stop to that right away.

***

Later on, Azula was proven right. Her family really did drive her crazy.

***

“Burn it down! Burn it down!”

A young man in a blue tunic crouched down to peer at the cage. He scratched his neck with the boomerang he was toying with in his hand. “Where did this bird come from?”

His companion crouched down next to him in the Royal Menagerie. “Oh Agni, I didn’t think my grandfather’s iguana-parrot was still alive.”

“Burn it down! Burn it down!”

“Is that the only thing it could say?”

“I think so.”

“Creepy.”

“I guess.” The second young man peered through the bars with his good eye, the right one not covered by a patch of old red burns. “I haven’t seen him in forever. It really brings me back to being a kid again, worried that the bird was either going to peck my eyes out or shit all over my good silk clothes.”

His friend laughed, and then hauled him up to his feet. “Let’s get out of this dusty menagerie then. Katara and Aang are waiting for us. They said they got Toph’s latest letter, and it’s a doozy.” He was still chatting about nothing in particular as Zuko took his hand.

“Yes,” Zuko said. “Let’s go.”

And they left.