-Danger, Deceit-
Book 01.: Fire Nation
Chapter .07: TEACHINGS

[To know what we know, and know what we do not know, is wisdom.]
– Confucius

Mai woke at dawn, tired and irritated by dreams which fragmented even as she tried to figure out why they had bothered her so much. 'Never mind, then.' Staring up at the unfamiliar shadows traced in rosy light on her ceiling, she swiped at her forehead and was surprised to find her hand come away drenched in sweat. 'Stupid humidity. Why'd I sleep with the windows open?'

'On the off chance that Zuko would be in a lovey-dovey mood and sneak in like a lover in a romance scroll?' her snide internal debate partner suggested.

"Oh, this is going to be such a lovely day," Mai observed aloud, mood soured beyond repair.

In all fairness, the capital was past due for one of those intolerably hot, sticky days summer inflicted every year without fail, but Mai was hardly of a mind to be fair to anyone or anything. Having endured last night's exhibition, the only thing to look "forward" to on this miserable morning was another tea party with Sharanya.

The maid had already laid out a set of formal robes for the day's appointment, doubtless under Maha's orders: heavy crimson shoulder cloths, gold appointments, and a double skirt to keep her strides small and ladylike. Mai curled her lip. That cinched it. She strode into her closet and began pawing through various drawers and boxes. It took a while, but she pulled together a much more comfortable outfit, loose and light, yet of dense enough silk that the outlines of her gauntlets and knife belt would not be readily apparent. No shoulder cloth, but Mai compromised with a madder-dyed over-tunic with flared shoulders. It was as close as she could get to her old robes, now packed away somewhere, archived with the other vestiges of her childhood. Maha could probably find them, if she asked him to.

As Mai adjusted her belt and thigh holsters to match up with the slits in the skirt, the maid returned to be surprised by her mistress's early rising.

"I'll have breakfast in the sunroom," Mai told her before the woman could start making a fuss over her clothes.

"Yes, Mistress," the maid agreed, her eyes on the tray of bolts for Mai's gauntlets. She bowed and left, no doubt hurrying to inform the steward of Mai's modification of the day's wardrobe.

Mai rolled her eyes and clicked a bolt in place. 'Everyone's a critic...'

"Young Mistress, we received the full harvest accounts from Higashi Estate last evening," Maha reported after a proper morning salutation. "With your leave..."

"Of course," Mai said, resigned to the idea of working through breakfast. She might as well let Maha get his own back after she skipped out on the bookkeeping the other day; he had been kind enough to restrain his critique of her choice of attire to the raise of a disapproving eyebrow, after all.

A serving maid laid out her breakfast, cool melon juice and milk tea, clear fish broth and cold salty gourd pickles cut into the shape of lotus petals, and a bowl of steaming rice. As hot as it already was, the breeze sighing through the airy sunroom overlooking her garden was cool enough for Mai to appreciate the tempting, delicate scents of breakfast. Without hesitation, she picked up her chopsticks and selected a pickle. "I'll look everything over this evening and approve the final report to be taken to the Treasury tomorrow."

Maha cleared his throat ever-so-softly.

"And the one for the Interior. By tomorrow morning," Mai amended before biting into the pickled "petal."

Her steward bowed. "Very good, Young Mistress. From my initial impressions, it seems that Administrator Satu is an adequate replacement for Foreman Kao. My independent investigation confirms that he works hard to meet the expectations you laid out for him when he was hired last year and that he appears honest in paying wages and contracting competent crews to maintain the silk worm houses and mulberry groves. However, the worm blight is still causing problems; as with Nishi Estate, Higashi produced below seventy percent of its expected capacity." He hesitated, eyes going to the door leading into the house. "Although Administrator Satu makes only brief mention of it in his account," Maha continued, voice pitched lower so only Mai could hear if another servant happened to wander in, "I believe he has the same problem with disaffected veterans that other clans' estates are experiencing in Azuma province."

Mai chewed the ends of her chopsticks. "Are they rioting?"

"Not yet." Maha shook his head. "Nothing like what happened in Xī, but with so many men idle and farms and factories unable to put them to work..."
He did not need to finish the sentence. The constabularies of Xī and neighboring provinces successfully halted last winter's attempted rebellion before it spread south to the capital and rounded up the leaders before they could flee, but not before they razed half a dozen estates and occupied an active Army supply depot. The traitors' subsequent "suicide while in custody" had not ended the matter, however. The embers of discontent still burned in the hearts of thousands of soldiers demoted to landless peasants with the end of the War.

Though no one mentioned it above a whisper in the Court, one only had to look at the shadowed, harried expressions of Homeland estate holders (and most nobles who were not military officers or descendants thereof drew wealth from Homeland properties, rather than the Continent) to know just who was one poor harvest or missed wage day away from anarchy and ruin. Mai was not nearly in such dire straits, thanks to her investments in various clan consortium and restitution from the state for her father's untimely death, but it was not a problem she could simply disregard. And though Zuko avoided the topic, she knew the prospect of future unrest threatening the capital weighed heavily on him as well.

"That's not to say all the news is grim," Maha said, picking up on her sudden lack of interest in breakfast. "The incorporation of paper mulberry into the wooded stock under your late grandmother's administration is returning increasing standards of crimson cocoons. Such a highly-valued commodity will ensure that you maintain controlling interest in the Sun Silk Cooperative."

Given that Maha only threw in tidbits of good news into a depressing report if there was something additionally unpleasant on the horizon, Mai knew to ask, "What else?" Maha's brows overshadowed his eyes. "Your honorable cousin, Sir Tzián, has sent word that, due to the unrest in Azuma as well as the Hong and Bi Territories, it is likely that the Teng-Sha Corporation will raise prices on dyes, baling, and transport when the Treasury releases the adjusted commodities report."

She stirred her milk tea with a small gold spoon, biting down on a curse. "An excuse for price-gouging; did he make another offer to buy my estates in the same letter, by any chance?"

"Indeed, Young Mistress." Maha hesitated.

"What is it?"

"It is... not unwise to at least consider offering him stock in the Nishi Estate. Sir Tzián's marriage into the Teng clan ensures that the Sun have access to a wider market on the Continent than any other available consortium. It would be in his interest to see that you receive the advantages of both parties if only to further his own profits. At the same time, you could establish an… independent relationship with the Teng and..."

"Enough for now," Mai interrupted, tapping the spoon on the lip of the cup. The sweet drink only somewhat alleviated her growing headache. 'Agni, every little thing - politics, trade, family, theater, it's all knotted together like spider-snake webs balled up and tossed to a pack of cats!' She knew what Maha wanted her to do: compromise with Tzián, lead him into a false sense of security until she found a way to make her own agreements with the Teng... and work out a compromise with them. Her mother's estates had always been intended for Mai when she came of age, the only thing Mai could truly say she owned herself. Silk farms were the traditional dowry of a noblewoman, having been the only landed properties a woman could own and designate heirs to until the Proprietary Reforms under Azulon. It was a measure of Mai's competence (and a small matter of pride) to manage her own property until she married. She had been tempted before, oh yes, to rid herself of the burden of two hundred households (and two hundred families) and hundreds of acres and miles of silk, but offers like her cousin's instinctively raised her hackles. To give him what he wanted was to admit she could not take care of her own household.

'"Sure, do that - since you can't do anything or go anywhere without someone stronger to back you up."' Mai frowned into her cup. 'Like I would throw in with a clan who thinks a brat like that is a suitable wife for Zuko.' An alliance with the Teng would be admission (and submission) in another form. "I'll keep that in mind, Maha. Send my regards to my cousin..." 'And tell him to go jump off the Gates of Azulon.'

"Very well, Young Mistress," Maha sighed.

The forecourt was devoid of life as Mai's chaise rattled through the gates. Small wonder, given the heat radiating from the stone steps through the soles of her slippers as she hastened into the comparative cool of Sharanya's mansion. Only one servant, the old woman from yesterday, was there to meet her. It gave Mai a bit of satisfaction to see the woman's girth made the heat a true ordeal, sweat blackening the grey hair at her temples and staining the back of her red robe with unsightly bits of dark. 'That's what you get if you let your servants wear silk,' Mai thought as she followed the woman to the veranda where Sharanya waited.

The woman halted at the door, indicating with a slight bow that Mai was to continue on her own devices, before retreating down the hall, likely in search of a nice basement storeroom to stay "busy" in. Mai snorted and pushed the door aside.

The first thing she noticed as she stepped into the warm shade was the conspicuous lack of people. No servant manning the limply-hanging overhead fan, no girls laying the table (currently cluttered with a collection of blown glass vessels, after the Crystal Flower style of ceremony), and, most importantly, no Sharanya. Mai stared at the empty chair, surprised at how surprised she was by the absence.

'Another wrinkle in the game?' Mai narrowed her eyes and looked about, scanning for signs of... well, anything out of sorts. The last two times she had been on this spot, she had not really had a chance to examine her surroundings, other than the priceless view beyond the veranda. That had been her first mistake, Mai realized, glaring at the door to her right, the one the servants came through on both occasions. How could she have let Sharanya force her to sit in a chair with her back exposed like that?

'Because you assumed you didn't have to have your guard up against a decrepit hag?' "Silly me..." Mai muttered to herself, looking to the other end of the veranda. She raised her eyebrows. 'Wouldn't have mattered either way?' What she had assumed was solid wall behind Sharanya on previous visits (not that she had really paid attention to what was behind the old hag - another mistake) was clearly a curtain of sepia-colored silk that matched the wood paneling of the rest of the place. It was certainly wide enough to conceal a door or an alcove of some sort...

Mai palmed a knife from her right holster, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling. She had no idea how thick the silk was, but given that she was standing in sunlit space, there was a good chance anyone standing on the other side could observe her from its concealing shadow. 'And wouldn't that be just the place for a crazy old bat to sit and laugh? Bet the sight of a knife would change that.' Affecting casual curiosity, Mai closed in on the curtain, readying her knife to slice through the folds.

*tump!*

Mai whirled, bringing her knife hand to her ear, tightening the trigger cords of her left gauntlet... only to stop and stare in surprise as her great-grandmother made her way across the veranda toward her customary seat, her cane tapping along at a dirge beat. Sharanya ignored Mai (or pretended she was not there - either case was equally insulting) and dropped into the chair with a long sigh.

'Still playing the senile old woman, are you?' Mai glared at the back of Sharanya's chair, but the matriarch made no move or sound, save for her slow, deep breaths. 'Well, hope you've enjoyed yourself...' Slipping the knife back into the holster, Mai moved to her place at the table, drawing the chair back and sitting down. The line dividing the shadow of the veranda roof and the hot glare of the climbing sun was just beginning to creep up over the edge of the table. Crystal Flower demanded that Mai time herself just right, filling the wide-mouthed jar with hot water and dropping the tea leaf-swaddled amaranth flowers in it so that they "bloomed" as the full sunlight hit them, releasing the delicate tea. She would then have to present the tea, another blossom floating on top, to Sharanya in a smaller glass before the light became too blinding and the heat too intense, ruining the tea (as well as the comfort of the people involved).

It was a tricky, overly-complex, and faddish style of tea ceremony that Mai frankly thought was beneath Sharanya. It was certainly beneath her. Looking across the table at the old woman who had yet to look at her or acknowledge her in anyway, Mai made her decision.

"I've had enough. No more of this!"

Sharanya did not seem to notice her outburst, her vague stare fixed on the warped, shimmering shadow cast by the bowl.

"I know you can hear me!" Mai said, fed up. She shoved away from the table and stood tall. At the sound of the chair screeching back over the polished wood floor, the matriarch finally stirred, blinking slowly up at Mai like an old cat goaded from sleep. Not exactly the reaction Mai expected, but it was a reaction.

"I've had enough of your games," she continued, flexing her fingers under the cover of her sleeves, feeling the weight of her gauntlets. Throwing her shoulders back and glaring down at Sharanya, Mai declared, "You can stop acting now! Whatever this is, some stupid test or just a way to amuse yourself by snapping your fingers and making people jump, I've had enough! No more letters, no more tea ceremonies, I'm through being at your beck and call!"

The hot, wet air took her words, swallowed them, but Mai did not care. Her blood sang in her veins, heart and breath racing like she had jumped from the highest roof of the Royal Palace and landed on her feet. She had done, she had told the old woman off! 'Finally...!'

"Why should I care what you want?" The retort, shot back in a low, steady voice, snapped Mai out of her daze of invincibility. Cold amber eyes returned her startled gaze with predatory disdain. The hairs on the back of Mai's neck stood straight, the cold-bitter ghost taste of spent lightning glancing over her tongue in memory of another pair of dangerous, too-cunning eyes.

"Perhaps I should clarify the question," Sharanya said, speaking louder in mocking echo of Mai's declaration. "Who are you to dictate to me?" "I..." 'Like hell I'm afraid of you!' "I am a noblewoman of the Fire Nation!" she said. "I'm the master of my household! You don't have the right to treat me like a child or servant!"

"Don't I?" Sharanya asked, raising a wispy eyebrow. "I am the matriarch of this clan, this noble family, whom you have sneered at and disdained with your sullen silence. You might be a noblewoman, yes - because you were lucky enough to have been born one. You're an adult in the eyes of the State for the sake of legal expedience, nothing more. You hold property as a result of that expedience; you maintain it only by virtue of the efforts of people more talented and dedicated than yourself, whom you take for granted." Mai opened her mouth to protest, but Sharanya went on, implacable as a judge pronouncing sentence. "You demand respect - for what? What have you achieved by your own virtue, discipline, effort, or passion that entitles you to my approbation? What alliances have you built, what influence do you have in the Court? What strength do you lend to our country?" She clicked her tongue against her teeth and looked at the ceiling, heaving a sigh of disgust. "The other clan leaders advance women of grace, talent, ambition, and intelligence, and what does the Sun Clan offer to the Fire Nation but this" she looked at Mai again, "child who scorns what she never worked for and stumbles about, oblivious to the danger of her unwarranted arrogance, waiting for a fairy-tale prince to swoop down and marry her!"

No one had ever spoken like that to her before. The sheer volume of contempt Sharanya unleashed literally took Mai's breath away. Old people were not supposed to talk like that, no one was supposed to talk like that, not to her! "I don't have to stand here and take your abuse," she informed the matriarch in as aloof a tone as she could scrape together.

"Then sit down," Sharanya suggested.

"I'm not going to let an old woman rant at me just because she thinks she has a say in how I live my life!" Mai shouted. "I don't care if you're the matriarch or… or the Dragon Queen, I'm leaving!"

'Running away so quickly?' a voice that sounded an awful lot like Lán sneered as she turned from the table. 'Do you really think a woman like Sharanya's just going to let your walk out of here after that?'

'What...?'

Out of the corner of her eye, Mai saw the curtain shift. No time to reach for a knife. She pivoted, leveling her right gauntlet and tightening the trigger cords to unleash a flight of bolts.

The soft sound of cloth sliding over cloth whispered behind her. Mai whirled, closing her fist...

*CRACK!*

Pain, then frightening paralysis, rippled up her arm; her right gauntlet split under a hammer blow, the ruined halves of the weapon ripping through her sleeve before falling to the floor. Unbalanced by the sudden lack of weight, Mai brought her left gauntlet to bear, firing point-blank in her attacker's face...

*CRACK!*

The gauntlet shattered under the bared jade teeth of Sharanya's lion-dog-head cane, a misfired bolt scoring the flesh at the base of Mai's thumb as it was ejected from its ruined cavity. Before she could scream in pain, reach for a knife, kick out with an ankle gauntlet, Sharanya closed in, thrusting her cane behind Mai's right leg. Already reeling, Mai fell against the unyielding haft and slammed into the wall behind her, her numbed arms flailing for purchase. Something hard slammed into her solar plexus, pinning her. Sharanya's withered hand flew at her face, nails like claws reaching up as though to scratch her eyes out...!

*chink!*

Mai blinked, her vision dancing with dark splotches and sparks. She hissed in a breath and the dark splotches resolved themselves into blurry shadows she realized were fingers. Sharanya's fingers. Something very cold, very sharp, and most definitely metal tickled the skin of her throat just below her jaw. 'What the...?'

"Among many, you have made two key incorrect assumptions," Sharanya said pleasantly, as though she were not currently holding a spring-loaded dagger at her great-granddaughter's throat or digging the head of her cane into Mai's stomach. "Firstly, that I cannot prevent you from leaving. Secondly, that your life belonged to you after you aligned yourself with the young Fire Lord. I intend to correct these assumptions. It is up to you as to how we go about it. Now, shall we converse like proper noblewomen?"

"H-how..." Mai gasped, more shocked than angry. 'How? An old woman like her? How?'

"Yes or no, Great-granddaughter. I must warn you, I'm getting on in years and the locking gear in my gauntlet has proved unreliable on occasion." As if to punctuate the statement, a series of minute metallic cricks and creaks sounded uncomfortably close to Mai's ear. One wrong move, on either of their parts...

It occurred to Mai that Sharanya was not the type to bluff once weapons had been drawn.

"Yes," she rasped, choking down on her rage and humiliation, "I would be honored to converse with you, Great-grandmother."

"Good." The hand and dagger went away and the jade lion-dog head dislodged from under her ribs. Mai braced against the wall, her limbs trembling and in no condition to support her. That, the animalistic, uncontrollable response to a brush with Death, more than anything convinced Mai that Sharanya had been (and likely, still was) deadly serious.

'She's a mad woman,' Mai thought, staring at the frail-seeming matriarch stooped over her cane just out of leg's reach, her eyes once more half-closed and sleepy.

"Believe me, if I'd taken leave of my senses," Sharanya said with the hint of a smile, "you wouldn't be here to pout about a little bit of sparring." She turned toward the curtain. "I suppose the sun's too high for a proper tea now. Follow me."

'She's baiting me,' Mai knew, glaring at the old woman's back as Sharanya made her way across the veranda, all-too confident that Mai would heed and obey. Still, the urge was there to pick a knife from her holster and hurl it, if only for the defiance of it. Pushing away from the wall caused her left hand to throb. 'Oh, right,' she remembered, hesitating before raising her hand. Bad enough to lose to an old woman, but to have her own weapons turned on her in the process was something particularly galling to acknowledge.

Pulling off her glove and examining the wound, Mai unconsciously loosed a sigh of relief: no serious harm done. 'Still doesn't mean it doesn't sting,' a very childish voice pointed out as blood dribbled out of the not-quite-that-deep-but-deep-enough gash. Mai pressed the tatters of her ruined sleeve to the wound, staunching the flow, for wont of anything else to do it with. Not like the maids could have saved it anyway,' she thought, suddenly giddy, watching as her blood seeped into the silk. 'Don't think I've bled this much since I cut myself learning to throw the tri-blade…'

Her forearms were starting to ache, bruised from the beating they had taken. Surveying the wreckage of her treasured gauntlets about her feet, it occurred to her that, 'Mother would be happy to see them gone, if she were here.' Giving her head a hard shake, Mai headed toward the curtain.

Pulling the hanging aside revealed a door, as expected. The room beyond was dark as a closet and Mai could not make out where Sharanya might be skulking.

"If you've decided to be cautious, don't do it standing in a doorway with the sun behind you," Sharanya's voice spoke from the gloom. "Come in and sit down." 'If I were going to kill you, I would have done so a dozen times already,' Mai understood. Tossing her head back, a knife at the ready, Mai entered the room, ready for anything.

"Open the blinds, if you don't mind," Sharanya said from her left. Mai whirled, sensing the close air of a wall behind her, blinking to rid her eyes of sun-induced blindness. There was light in the dark after a few seconds, from the door she had just come through, but also seeping through cracks in the wall at her back; a window.

"Trading a door for a window isn't much better," the matriarch chided, a squat shadow amid other shadows. "I understand your pride's been wounded, but now you're just wasting my time. Put that knife back in its holster, open the blinds, and sit down."

Mai ground her teeth, but there really was nothing she could do; no matter where she moved, Sharanya had her pinned. 'That's what you get for waltzing into the spider-snake's nest.' She found the lever for the blinds and raised it, squinting as the sunlight poured in and revealed the dimensions of the room.

Small, narrow, maybe half the size of her sunroom back home. Sharanya sat in a low-backed chair at the far wall, a knee-high table and another chair, both carved from rosewood, arranged between her and Mai. The polished planks of the teak floor gleamed dark-streaked copper and gold bars where the sunlight touched. 'Wonder how long it took the servants to get it like that.' On the other hand, people did not hide trapdoors under such expensive floorboards. The walls were spotless, white-washed, sectioned by evenly-spaced columns of dark wood along the length; no seams that Mai could see, so no trapdoors or peepholes. An alcove of sorts sank into the wall at her right, probably housing a philosophical scroll and a flower arrangement. She could only expect as much from a traditionalist like Sharanya. 'Also, a good place for hidey-hole.'

"If you're done finally paying attention your surroundings…" Sharanya reached for the teacup in front of her, a clunky cylinder of pale clay at first glance, but a masterwork of porcelain at the second. A second, similar cup waited for Mai on the table.

Mai bowed slightly, slipping her knife back into its holster before moving toward the second chair. As she passed the alcove (which contained the expected scroll and but not the flower arrangement), she noted the inscription painted on the cloth and could only smirk: '"Accordance with the right leads to good fortune; following what is opposed to it, to bad, the shadow and the echo." In other words, bow your head and swallow your tongue, and don't bother thinking for yourself. Sounds exactly like what someone like her would live by.'

"You disapprove of Prince Yu's sentiments?"

Mai slid her chair back and sat down, folding her hands in her lap. "I think Prince Yu is correct to advise obedience," she said in her best Academy classroom recitation voice, "but I wonder which authority he deems worthy of submitting to."

Sharanya rolled her teacup between her hands. "Good answer," she said at last, "but mind the sarcasm. It's not nearly as well hidden as you think."

Mai breathed out, refusing to rise to the bait.

"Of course, that quote is often taken out of context," Sharanya continued, as though they were seriously discussing the philosophies of men whose bones had turned to ash centuries ago. "Prince Yu was cast out of his homeland and forced to wander the outer islands with his people as a result of a disastrous civil war. He wished to caution future rulers of the dangers of pride. 'Do not carry out plans, the wisdom of which you have doubts. Study, that all your purposes may be with the light of reason. Do not go against what is right, to get the praise of the people. Do not oppose the people's wishes, to follow your own desires…' and so forth. Do you know which authority he might be referring to in that case?"

There was only so far Mai was willing to take a charade, once the curtain went down. "Is there a point to this?" she asked with purposeful blandness. "You broke my gauntlets, insulted me to my face, and now you expect me to sit here cheerfully drinking tea and discussing outdated moral philosophy?"

"Yes." Sharanya placed her teacup on the table. "You are a noblewoman of the Sun clan. I expect you to pull up your big girl skirts, smile charmingly in your enemy's face, and figure out a way to outwit them. Or am I asking too much of you?"
Mai glared.

"I suppose so." The matriarch leaned back in her chair, eyes drifting nearly closed. "Do you mind binding up that hand of yours properly? Not that the servants can't clean it up later, but I don't see the point of foisting unnecessary work on them."

"Isn't that what servants are for?" Mai retorted. "And what, exactly, am I supposed to bandage it with, anyway?"

Sharanya's lips thinned. "You shouldn't think so little of servants, yours or otherwise. They're still people, and oftentimes, far more capable and useful than you give them credit for. Also, there's a medicine chest under the table. Everything's freshly prepared, don't worry."

Warily, Mai reached under the table, her fingers first meeting a shelf, then a small wooden chest. Pulling it out and placing it beside her untouched teacup (who drank cold barley tea anymore, but peasants and old people?), she raised the lid and found everything she would need to tend to her wound, and then some.

"Were you expecting to do something more drastic?" she asked, pulling the tourniquet out between a finger and thumb.

Sharanya shrugged. "Just to be sure, you might want to try stitching up that scratch. It might fester in weather like this."

Mai dropped the tourniquet with a grimace and extracted a vial of ointment. Pulling out the cork produced a strong stench that made her eyes water. "Garlic?" she demanded. "What am I, a farmer?"

"Not just garlic, but mashed sungold root as well," Sharanya corrected, apparently amused by Mai's reaction. "Why spend gold for a fancy tincture or rare oil when something that's saved lives for centuries can be had for a few coppers?"

'You'll get yours one day, you damn hag!' Mai promised herself. A thought occurred to her, and it took a bit of effort not to smirk.

"Oh, good," Sharanya said unexpectedly. Mai paused in the midst of dunking a wad of rolled bandage in her tea to stare at her. "You found use for something right in front of you. Maybe you're not as hopeless as I thought."

'Damn it!' Mai swabbed her wound, hard enough to get it bleeding again. Cursing inwardly, she hurried to smear the noisome ointment over her skin, swathing it in gauzy bandage until she could no longer smell it. Or, smell as much of it, at least; her other fingers still reeked of garlic.

"Please, allow me." Sharanya tapped her cane on the floor. The wall to her left slid aside ('So much for there not being any trapdoors…') and the old serving woman from before stepped into the room, a bowl of what smelled to be rose water in her hands and a pristine linen towel over one forearm. Without prompt or ceremony, she placed the bowl in front of Mai and offered her the towel.

Mai almost did not take it, but between making a childish gesture for pride's sake and not smelling like a sack of onions in a marketplace, she figured her pride could stand one more bruise for the day. She reached for the towel.

"Kushen, she needs your attention."

"Yes, mistress."

"Wait, what are you…?" Mai demanded as the woman seized her by the wrist, her grip gentle but unyielding as prison manacles, baring skin already mottled with dark bruises. Before Mai could protest further, a sudden cold glow filled the room, as if the moon had temporarily descended to push back the sunlight. Cool, scented water swirled around Mai's forearm, leeching the ache and the ugly black marks from her skin, Kushen's other hand guiding its path.

"Your other arm if you please, Lady Mai," the servant said.

Bemused, Mai raised it, staring at the water that stayed suspended around the woman's hand without any apparent effort. She said nothing as Kushen removed her remaining glove and played the water over her bruised skin, removing all evidence of Sharanya's attack.

'Not quite all, actually…'

"Mistress, shall I also heal the wound she bandaged?"

"No." Sharanya waved her away. "She put her own effort into treating it, she deserves to know if her ability pays off. However, you may see if you can find another tunic for her."

"Yes, mistress." With one last bow, Kushen withdrew.

"Ever wonder why the Fire Nation never bothered to attack the Northern Water Tribe until Ozai let that Zhao fool lose nearly an entire fleet to kill a fish?" Sharanya asked before Mai could say anything.

"Not… really…" Mai admitted, too bewildered to lie.

Sharanya sighed. "Such is the quality of national education these days. You can look it up on your own time."

The corner of Mai's left eye was beginning to spasm. "Thank you for your attention, Great-grandmother," Mai said, bowing to the matriarch and swallowing the epithet she very dearly wanted to tack on.

"I'm not the one you should thank," Sharanya said. "Yuming must not have instructed you in proper manners as well as I was led to believe."

Mai straightened, clamping down on a sudden spike of hot anger. "I apologize for the deficiencies of my mother's instruction."

Sharanya raised an eyebrow. "Do you?" she replied softly. "You don't think very much of your mother, or your father, not now, not even when they were alive."

"I obeyed their rules. What more did I owe them?"

The matriarch was quiet for a long time, but Mai refused to budge, refused to be stared down by those cold amber eyes. "I see," Sharanya said at last. "And this faulty mask you always wear, your disdain for everything around you, these things are the result of their instruction?"

"Isn't it?" Mai sneered. "They raised me to be this way."

"They're dead," Sharanya said, her eyes suddenly open, the cold amber piercing. "They've been dead for at least two years, and yet their ghosts still haunt you. How long are you going to allow the dead to decide how you live your life? You hide yourself away, absorbed in self-indulgent pastimes and maudlin affection, running away from the world you were born into and must live in. Do you really think you have no effect on anyone else around you?"

"Why do you care?" Mai hissed, straining to keep from shouting. "You only want to force me to start acting the way you think is right."

Sharanya did not respond right away, and it was harder this time for Mai to force herself to stay silent, to stay still, to keep her mask from cracking yet again. How could anyone do that, taunt her about her parents' death, belittle her love for Zuko? "You endanger the clan with your recklessness and your inattention," Sharanya finally said.

"What do I care about the clan?" Mai demanded. "What has the clan ever done for me?"

Sharanya cocked her head, her voice soft. "Then you consider what Fa did, risking himself, Chyou, and her son, to pull you and that half-Lài twit out of your prisons after you betrayed Princess Azula, to be of no consequence?"

"Of course not!" Mai snapped. "But he did that on his own, I didn't ask him to! And Azula couldn't do anything to him, or Chyou, she was…!"

"Stark raving mad? Sending people in to "exile" and making them disappear, never to be seen again, at a whim? What do you think it took for Fa to get you out of the Boiling Rock?"

"I…" Mai bit the inside of her lip, breathing deeply. "I don't know."

"You don't know, or you don't care?" Sharanya retorted.

Mai did not answer.

"Very well." Sharanya reached for her teacup. "All things considered, I cannot absent myself from your present course." She held up a hand, staying Mai's protest. "You have the support of the Sun clan to marry Fire Lord Zuko, on the condition that you play your part."

"And what part might that be?" Mai asked sarcastically.

"Bait." Sharanya's lips pulled up into a feline smirk. "The enemies of the Sun clan and the Fire Nation are already circling you. When they move to strike, we will entrap them. You needn't do a thing; in fact, you are free to put this entire conversation from your mind and continue playing concubine to the boy. I will take care of the nasty shadows." She sipped her tea. "If you have nothing else to say, you may go."

Mai hesitated, more than eager to leave, but hating to be dismissed so casually. 'Do you really think that she's going to let it drop here? She has to have something else up her sleeve.'

'If she has anything else to say, she knows where to find me.' It sounded pathetic rather than defiant even in her own head. Mai got to her feet, intending to go out the way she had come in.

"Of course, you are also free to try and defend yourself, perhaps even learn something about your opponents and build alliances on your own," Sharanya mentioned, as if just remembering. "You'll need these, in either case..."

The false wall slid aside, revealing Kushen standing at the ready. Instead of a towel and a bowl of water, she had a plain red cotton tunic over one arm and a large wooden chest which Mai recognized in her hands.

"How did you get that?" she demanded, stepping toward Kushen to seize the precious object.

"Oh, so there are other things in this world you're at least sentimental about," Sharanya observed, unfazed. "But it's not the one your mother gave you. Go on, lift up the lid."

Mai had not bothered to wait on the matriarch's bidding. Her eyes went wide. 'They're…!'

"You'll find them lighter and easier to load than the older model," Sharanya said as Mai lifted a metal gauntlet from the silk-lined chest. Instead of encasing the whole forearm in wood, the gauntlet was composed of a five-cylinder array over a steel-plated upper guard that would fit from her mid arm to just below her wrist. The cylinders were stockier than those of her now-destroyed gauntlet; Mai's eyes happened to fall on the inside of the chest's lid. Row upon row of bolts, constrained by a simple bronze cap at their ends, lined the lid. 'Load five at once, instead of one at a time… effectively, a repeating magazine.' She had long since given up devising such a system for her own weapons.

Two thick collars of leather padded the steel bands that would secure the gauntlet around her arm. A second guard, narrower than the once mounting the firing mechanism, bridged the bands, giving the mechanism a little more heft and stability. Turning it sideways, Mai scrutinized the firing and locking mechanisms: high torsion steel springs, much smaller than those in her old pair of gauntlets. 'Smaller, but stronger; amazing what they do with alloys nowadays,' Mai assessed after a testing tug at the thumb loader. 'But it's either-or, firing-wise: one bolt, or the whole magazine at once. It's basically the Tateng ballista in miniature. But, how…?'

"You'll want to practice disengaging the locking gear on the greaves before wearing them in public," Sharanya advised, placing her empty cup on the table and picking up her cane. "Nothing more embarrassing than pinning the hem of your robes to the floor because you didn't walk softly enough." She stood, raising an eyebrow at Mai's astonished expression.

"My dear Great-granddaughter, who did you think dispatches the White Lion-Dog to bestow her claws?"

A/N: Other than Hama, there is a distinct lack of kick-ass grandma's in A:tLA. Sharanya is a character type that I've always wanted to work with: intelligent, politically savvy,and someone who will not hesitate to inform you that you're being an idiot (or beating you senseless, if that's what it takes). Question is, is her approach the right one to take to get Mai to accept all the political nastiness and social posturing required of a Fire Lady?

Add.: The "Prince Yu" Sharanya quotes is an allusion to a character in my A:tLA "legends" fic, Tales of the Spirit World: The Fall of the Blue Spirit known as "Elder Yu." I quoted the Shang Shu ([尚書] aka "The Classic of History") dated back to China's Spring and Autumn period (772 BC - 476 BC). The specific passage (modified for the story), is found in Counsels of the Great Yu [大禹謨], stanzas four and five. [trans. by James Legge]