Making Change

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"Shopping!"

Haru smiled. Katara's brother was so excitable in a lot of ways, and few things seemed to fill him with sheer delight as the prospect of hitting the markets. It was something Haru could definitely appreciate - the urge to haggle and drive a hard bargain had never left him. Hell, after getting into his current venture with Teo, it had only sharpened.

He could also see why Katara had all but shoved Sokka at him when they ran into him in the Fire Palace. He had been on his way to pay his respects to his patron, Daimyo Osamu, but neither Teo's airship nor the daimyo were leaving anytime soon. "Sure. Let's get our money changed and see what there is to see around here."

Sokka gave him a look, the one Haru had come to think of as 'you speak crazy-talk'. "'Get our money changed'?"

"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm still carrying Earth Kingdom money around. Sure, the merchants will take it, but they charge you higher. So I change my money for Fire Nation coin before I go shopping."

Sokka momentarily looked very startled, then he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Huh. All right. So how does that work?"

Haru grinned. "Well, we're in the Fire Nation Palace itself so we can just walk down to the Imperial Money-Changers and trade in. Come on."

They strode through the corridors of polished wood, and the servants ignored the pair of them. The guards probably didn't, but Haru wasn't even sure if they were living people or statues under the all-encompassing armor of the Imperial Firebenders.

Still, being ignored was much better than things were three years ago.

The office of the Imperial Money-Changers was on the level just above the ground, and it was rather plain as far as the Fire Nation palace went. No wall-hangings, only one layer of carpets. The only decoration was the bare walls themselves - coming here was the first time Haru had ever realized the wooden walls were intricately carved throughout the palace.

Sokka paused just inside the door, looking around. "Since when do they carve the walls here? And seriously, do dragons have to be part of everything in the Fire Nation?"

"Yes," one of the money-changers answers flippantly. It was bronze-skinned Kouka, and Haru grinned to see him. "Got more fake money for me, Haru?"

"Money that's actually worth something you mean," Haru replied as he pulled out his money. He counted it quickly, sorted it by color, and handed it to the money-changer. "Fire Nation money's just metal."

"Earth Kingdom money is paper. Metal is worth something." Kouka counted it himself, sorting each out into a different pile. "Look, you're bringing me money from all these different cities and from all these different printing presses. What am I going to do if one of them doesn't honor the value of it?"

"Suffer?" Haru suggested. "Ba Sing Se honors and authorizes all money printed in the Earth Kingdom, you know that. As long as it has the proper seals..."

Kouka hnhed and settled into the tedious process of examining each strip of paper for the necessary vermillion seals.

"... Take it you know the guy?" Sokka said, watching the process with interest.

"Yeah. He's from Buyou no Long Shima. Daimyo Osamu introduced me," Haru answered.

Sokka gave him a dubious look. None of Zuko's friends really liked that he had gone to the daimyo for money to finish the repairs on Teo's airship. Of course, none of them had had to deal with how unhappy Teo was over not being able to finish the job, or how no one in the Earth Kingdom thought a working airship could be used to make money.

Ty Lee had listened, though. She was the one who got him an introduction to Daimyo Osamu. The Fire Nation noble had been quite intrigued by what Haru proposed.

But he wasn't friendly to Zuko's reign as Firelord, which tainted him in Katara's eyes. Her views on Fire Nation nobility tended to rub off on her brother, since he spent the most of his scant time in the Fire Nation with Piandao.

Of course, Haru thought with some resignation, Daimyo Osamu not being friendly to Zuko was one up on just about every other noble in the Fire Nation who wasn't actively related to Zuko or Mai. Even some the ones who were disliked the Firelord.

"How much has Mai told you?" He asked. "Because she's the one Ty Lee's been talking to."

Sokka waved a hand vaguely. "You know Mai. She doesn't talk more than she has to."

Haru decided not to point out that he didn't know Mai. The lady was his girlfriend's friend, but he barely got a chance to see Ty Lee these days, much less Ty Lee's friends. "Right. Well, buy me a beer later and I'll tell you about it."

A grin crossed Sokka's face, then he glanced down at Kouka's counting again. "So. He's kind of got a point about the whole 'printing money' thing."

"Not really," Kouka replied absently. "The Earth Kingdom keeps the printing plates and seals locked up tight as a Crown Prince's ass."

Haru and Sokka both blinked.

"Okay..." Sokka said slowly. "I did not need that mental image."

Kouka grinned and opened his mouth to say something else. Haru interrupted before he could; he'd had this conversation before, and he didn't particularly want to get into it again. Kouka enjoyed teasing people from other nations far, far too much.

"Printed money has a lot steadier value than metal coin." He pulled out a handful of Fire Nation coins that he hadn't bothered to trade back during his last trip. "Especially with more people learning how to metalbend."

Kouka snorted. "You lot were printing money long before metalbending was even possible."

"And we're back to the Fire Nation guy having a point again," Sokka said.

Haru flicked the coins through his fingers until he found a gouged one. "Look at this, Sokka. It's missing part of the bronze, but-" He flicked the coin at Kouka. "How much is it worth?"

"I don't know," the money-changer answered irritably. "I'd have to weigh it first."

"But the Fire Nation still takes it. They just adjust how much it's worth," Haru explained as he looked through his remaining handful of coins. None of them were as gouged as badly as that one, but a lot of them had shaved edges and filed off markings. "Need to get all of these weighed, actually, while we're here."

"Okay..." Sokka looked thoughtfully at the metal coins and the stacks of paper Kouka was laboriously going over. "So you're saying both methods are bad."

Kouka snickered, and Haru felt like slapping his forehead. The coins on the money-changers' desks and in pouches began to click and rattle against each other. Water Tribe! He liked them, he really did, but sometimes they just didn't get civilization at all.

"Hey, hey, earthshaker, knock it off," one of the other money-changers snapped.

"Sorry," he muttered, lifting his feet one at a time to break his connection to the metal coins.

"They're both pretty flawed," Kouka said after the coins went still again. "But it's easier than straight up barter, and it's only really a major problem when you're crossing from one nation to another. Looks like all of these are real, Haru."

"I could have told you that," Haru pointed out.

"But he wouldn't have believed you," Sokka commented. Then he blinked as both Haru and the money-changer stared at him. "What? I wouldn't believe a guy telling me his money is real just on his say-so."

"You have just discovered something that most merchants haven't learned in thirty years," Kouka said solemnly. He inclined his head just slightly to Sokka, then turned and flicked flame into a bronze-wrapped chest. The firebending-lock clicked open with minimal fuss, revealing a myriad of trays holding more Earth Kingdom paper money. Kouka filed the strips Haru had given him, shut the chest, opened another one, and started pulling out sealed pouches of Fire Nation coin.

Sokka hefted one of the pouches in his hands. "One hundred koban, sealed on authority of the Imperial Money-Changers under Firelord Zuko. Nice."

Haru nodded absently, counting through the pouches. At least until Kouka made a sound like someone had stabbed him, eyes wide as he stared at Sokka. Haru glanced over and nearly flinched. "Don't you dare!"

Sokka looked up from the knife he'd just worked under the edge of the seal, paused. "... What?"

"It's sealed," Haru said, gritting his teeth. "Unsealing it destroys the value."

Sokka gave him a puzzled look. "Why? There's still a hundred koban coins here. Unsealing it doesn't change that."

"Except there aren't." Haru folded his arms. "The pouch is worth one hundred koban, but that doesn't mean there are one hundred coins in there."

"... Right."

That 'you speak crazy-talk' expression of Sokka's was starting to get far too familiar. Haru glanced at Kouka, who just reached over and plucked the pouch from Sokka's hands.

"Koban coins are made of gold," Kouka said. "There are a lot of people who have uses for gold and mangling coins to get the gold out of them is pretty common. That's why we weigh coins rather than counting them." He melted the wax seal on the pouch with his hand and spilled the oval coins on the table. Quickly, he stacked the coins in stacks of fives and rows of four. He came out with five complete rows and half of another. "See? More than a hundred coins, but there's only enough gold here to be worth a hundred coins."

"Huh." Sokka reached over and scattered some of the coins on the wooden desk, looking at the gouges and shaved edges. "Okay. I guess that makes sense."

"Yes. Yes, it does," Kouka said firmly as he replaced the pouch that he had just opened. "Now, do you two have anything else?"

"I need to change my money," Sokka said with an easy smile. "Hey, Zuko mentioned you guys take Water Tribe coin now. Think you can manage that and Earth Kingdom strips?"

Kouka groaned.

-End-