On the third floor, refinement gave way to riot. The retainers' hall resounded with laughter, wagers, and coarse amusements. Dice clattered against wood, bowls of strong liquor passed from hand to hand. Each loser was compelled to drink until half the company reeled with intoxication.
One Zhang tribesman in particular suffered endless misfortune at the dice. His face, flushed with crimson, barely masked his fading consciousness. Still, he demanded another round. With trembling hands he shook the cup and slammed it down.
"Lift it! Lift it!" his companions jeered.
Five ones.
Thunderous laughter shook the room. The unlucky fellow covered his eyes, accepted the bowl and drained it in one long gulp. He stumbled a few steps before collapsing sideways in drunken stupor.
The rest roared, undeterred and the game began anew. Any Ganjinese wandering into that chamber would have recoiled at the sight of this unruly chorus of mirth, a world apart from the courtesies of the courtyard below.
"I fail to see the merit of gambling," Mayumi remarked. "Even victory earns nothing." She sat among a knot of armed retainers, most of them hardened bodyguards in service to Upper Ring households and sharing the meal laid out by their Ganjinese hosts.
Though she felt the dice and cards being rattled about the hall is rather distracting, Mayumi could not deny the fare itself. All are clean dishes, delicate plates of steamed fish and meats said to be simmered with the purest water of the Upper Ring. The wine also flowed freely, fragrant and sharp. Yet it was not the food nor the drink that held her current attention, but the gathering itself.
The fellow armed retainers are a strange, motley company. Few resembled the locals of Ba Sing Se. Their garb also varied wildly, silks and furs in mismatched shades of green, blades gleaming at their sides. Former soldiers, steppe herdsmen, wanderers, all formidable in their own right and each sworn to their patrons by the promise of lucrative pay.
Her gaze lingered on her own tablemates. The largest is a scarred hunter missing an eye and a giant harpoon as a weapon, traveled both the North and South Poles. Then there is some runaway Fire Nation scion turned mercenary swordswoman. Most incongruously, a monk expelled from the Air Temple?
The Kyoshi Warrior wondered what den of vagabonds she had stepped into. Their quirks and manners, coupled with the presence of so many armed men and women brandishing ringed sabers and foreign steel, made the hall seem less like a wedding feast for retainers and more like the den of a cutthroat guild. And perhaps, she thought, that might not be an exaggeration.
"The host knows his wine," the Water Tribe hunter declared, upending an entire jar and wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his vast fur coat. "I have wandered the Jianghu for years. The last brew of this caliber I tasted was in Omashu, though their royal court were too stingy to share much of it."
The Fire Nation woman heated her own cup with a casual flicker of flame, even warming others' drinks, including that of the monk beside her.
Speaking of the supposed ascetic in orange robe, he courteously declined the offered wine, even after his expulsion from the four Air Temples. He cited the ancient precepts of renouncing all desires, the creed of abstaining from every indulgence known to the flesh. Yet, despite his professed devotion to spiritual purity, his words hinted a sense of bitterness. He claimed that his exile was not for vice but for condemning those he called cheap imitators, people whose only merit was their command of air, using it as a veil to conceal their disdain for sutras and practice debauchery upon sacred grounds.
"I cannot partake in wine or meat," said the monk, bowing his head slightly. "But please, help yourselves."
Mayumi lifted her own warmed jar and inhaled the heady scent. "It is heavy," she said. It was the very vintage gifted to Shan, sealed in a porcelain gourd. She drained the cup in one long pull, yet her senses remained sharp and unclouded.
"Strong stuff indeed!" The Water Tribe hunter said after finishing his portion. However, he hiccupped thunderously before toppling sideways. Mayumi caught his shoulder, sparing him a graceless fall.
"I must say, your tolerance is impressive!" the Fire Nation swordswoman said, praising Mayumi's ability to not succumb to the wine's potency. "You've already better than Kiviuq over here."
The hunter, still swaddled in his animal pelts, collapsed into snores on the table. Understandably, the people of the Northern and Southern Water Tribes are seldom acquainted with potent wines, for the frozen tundra do not exactly offers fertile fields for crops fit to ferment.
The Fire Nation woman turned her smile on Mayumi. "And what tale brings you to this trade? Every blade at these tables carries a story, and most of us know each other from past countless banquets and wedding feasts. But you, I do not recognize. You must be new here."
"Once a traveling theater performer," Mayumi said, offering the false name she carried in Ba Sing Se. "The White Scholar is generous. Lacking a protector for occasions such as this, I am lucky enough to be hired."
They listened without pressing, though Mayumi felt the prickling sense of ears beyond their circle, others in the hall who are far more intent on gleaning whispers than on gambling or drinking. Many here, she suspected, wore masks of their own. Skill with a sword may not necessarily be those who once served in Ba Sing Se's military. Martial skills could come elsewhere if not being a soldier.
"Your devotion to your sister is admirable," the monk observed gently. He asked no more, perhaps preferring to hold himself apart from hired steel and sordid pasts.
The Fire Nation swordswoman, however, had no such restraint. Her voice carrying a conspiratorial lilt, sharing her own story that is already well-known around these parts.
"Upper Ring folk call their neighbors pedantic and petty," she chuckled, introducing herself as Seoja, even claiming to share blood with a very prominent minister at the Fire Nation capital who brushes shoulders with Zuko himself. "But they know nothing of the vices among Fire Nation nobility. I was born to such a house, and I tell you, some of those lords would give Ximen Qing a run for his money, though with less than half his boldness."
A chorus of laughter and raised cups followed in the background of this room. Clearly, she is well-known among the circles of the city.
"Lady Seoja has long roamed the Jianghu for years," the monk added. "If you find yourself unfamiliar with its ways, speak freely. Those of us gathered here have also travelled almost directionless across the vast realm at war."
For an instant, Mayumi almost believed this so-called monk could peer into her very thoughts. Considering the many enigmas surrounding the Air Nomads, she dared not leap to conclusions about such mystic folk. Yet the matter was peculiar. While the Air Temples had their share of renegades, true banishments were exceedingly rare.
"Seoja, was it?" Mayumi turned to the swordswoman, who was warming another jar of good wine with her Firebending. "What is this Jianghu I keep hearing of? Does it bear any relation to the daofei?"
The word was unfamiliar on her tongue. Mayumi had heard it muttered a few times among the retainers, usually as self-praise for their supposed martial renown or long wandering years. Yet if she should stumble into lawlessness, Mayumi could well imagine how swiftly the Dai Li would descend upon her.
"You really are new," Seoja remarked with mild astonishment, though she softened her tone to guide the newcomer through the surface mysteries of the Jianghu. "Picture a thin sheet of ice," she began. "Above it lies ordinary society of farmers, artisans, merchants, living their uneventful lives. But beneath the ice flows another world, and everyone knows even if they pretend not to."
"D-daofei?" Mayumi asked cautiously.
"Not exactly," Seoja said, after a thoughtful pause. "Some among us do bear unsavory pasts, but calling the Jianghu mere banditry would be a poor simplification. True, thieves and villains may be included, yet it also shelters wandering heroes, wandering villains, entire schools of martial practice, and figures so notorious they've slipped into legend."
As Seoja explained further, Mayumi gathered that the Jianghu is a shifting, elusive society. It is neither wholly criminal nor respectable. Its members kept a wary distance from officials and magistrates, treading the margins of law. Within this loose environment could be found anything from storied martial clans to noble thieves whispered in inns.
To depart from this hidden world required some sort of public rite of renunciation, after which one might rejoin the common lot. One of the most famed was the one nicknamed the Imperial Cat, once a peerless duelist of the underworld, now serving respectably at a Ba Sing Se courthouse.
Mayumi nodded, though her thoughts raced. Even Seoja admitted no explanation could suffice for an outsider raised in the hinterlands where the idea of a shadow-society existing alongside ordinary folk seemed both improbable and strangely accepted.
"And who," Mayumi ventured carefully. "Are said to be the greatest among this Jianghu? Surely there are some great ones in the past and present?"
Seoja kindled a faint flame beneath the pot, letting her Firebending coax the tea to a gentle simmer. As the fragrant steam curled upward, she began to speak of certain renowned figures. Names that, under more prudent circumstances, ought never be uttered before a lawman. Among the sprawling roster of the powerful and the infamous are wanderers and vagabonds versed in the arts of combat, whether through bending, the mastery of arms, or sheer unarmed discipline. Some had defied the dominion of local lords, others sold their strength as mercenaries or bodyguards, not unlike the company gathered in this very room. Special categories are also those belonging to peculiar spiritual sects scattered across the Earth Kingdom, the so-called cultivators, known as devotees to temples consecrated to folk heroes and deities cherished by the common people. But in Seoja's own telling, the common consensus spoke of seven sword-bearers, warriors so formidable that legend claimed when their strength was united, even kings and Avatars would be made to kneel.
But right now, the monk only focuses on the religious sects across the Earth Kingdom that also practices martial arts.
"I do not disdain such cultivators," the monk interjected lightly. "But I fail to see how swallowing cinnabar elixirs in pursuit of immortality would bode well with rulers who covet true enlightenment without meditation."
Mayumi's eyes shifted toward him once more. From the moment she entered, she had doubted whether this bald, orange-robed figure was a true monk at all. He bore the garb and leaned upon a simple wooden staff, but why had the Air Temples cast him out?
"V-venerable one," she said carefully, addressing him as she once had Tenzin or Xuan Zang. "Are you… also a household bodyguard?"
The monk inclined his head as Seoja poured four cups of fragrant tea, though only three of them would drink. At length, the man in orange spoke.
"I, Jue Qing, was but a young disciple at the Southern Air Temple," he began softly, voice tinged with a faint wistfulness. "I sought enlightenment, to free myself from the chains of attachment and the endless tide of suffering. Yet, not long after a new wave of initiates arrived." He paused, as though sifting through memories long buried. "They were not ascetics, not like me and my brothers, the air acolytes who devoted our whole lives in reviving the old ways and following the teachings of Master Aang. Many of them scarcely meditated. Some did, though few seemed receptive to the teachings. And yet…" His tone faltered, the faintest bitterness creeping in. "It would seem that a lifetime spent adhering to the sutras and the Air Nomad way of life counts for little beside those who were blessed, those born with the power to command the very air itself even if they live untroubled by the discipline meant to free them from desire."
Mayumi listened intently, her curiosity piqued by the subtle implications behind Jue Qing's words. To most commoners, the great Air Temples are distant sanctuaries perched upon unreachable peaks, places one could scarcely glimpse unless blessed with the strength to scale those herculean mountains or the fortune to ride a Sky Bison. From her understanding, a monk's life was meant to be one of austerity, stripped of excess in both possession and conduct. Within the labyrinth of monastic rules, certain prohibitions are self-evident. Meat and wine, for instance are indulgences that could easily mislead those who sought the path toward true enlightenment.
"Then what happened?" Mayumi asked, letting her cup of tea cool between her hands. "From what I've read… or rather, heard, the Air Temples are built in isolation to prevent monks from being distracted, far from cities like Ba Sing Se."
"A perceptive observation," Jue Qing acknowledged with a nod. "Yet distraction has found their way even into the four great monastic sanctuaries. The venerable Master Tenzin is eager to induct new Airbenders, seeing in them a chance to restore the old ways of the Air Nomads after the calamity of the great war. Tragically, no shortage of the inductees themselves is the greatest misfortune. While a few embrace the path laid down by the ancient monks and nuns, many others succumb to baser indulgences. In my experience, the scent of smuggled wine and blatant carnalities among new arrivals hardly cultivates the serene atmosphere one expects in a temple."
Some of the retainers in the background chuckled, finding amusement in Jue Qing's solemnity. To the banished monk, these lapses in discipline are no trivial matter, they corrupted the very essence of a sanctuary meant to transcend attachment and worldly desire.
"I thought monks are forbidden to marry," Mayumi said, raising her cup to test the tea's temperature. "The temples are separate, surely marriage is forbidden there."
From Mayumi's perspective, drawn from her father's texts, the Air Nomads seemed almost alien in their detachment from familial bonds. Among common folk, few dared questions how the Air Nomads of old even replenished their numbers, as it is believed that every member of the four temples prior to the Fire Nation's devastating war was an Airbender.
"Some rules are pliable," Jue Qing said. "Yet, as more Airbenders arrived, it became apparent that not all shared Master Tenzin's dedication. My open denunciation of some newcomers' carnality within temple grounds escalated beyond my control. For that, I was exiled."
The conversation held an unexpected intrigue. Even a place designed as an oasis from worldly desires was not immune to the stirrings of human folly. No doubt, some monks and nuns quietly resented the influx of new Airbenders, their sacred rhythms sidelined.
The tea has finally cooled somewhat, allowing them to savor the taste and take a break from the stories.
Seoja sipped her cup, savoring the brew crafted by the Ganjinese, finding it superior even to the Jasmine Dragon's offerings.
"The hot leaf juice is exquisite," she said. "Compliments to the hosts."
"It is more than mere leaf juice," Mayumi replied with calm precision. "My employer mentioned that the Ganjinese cultivate a special leaf, reputed to extend one's longevity."
"Well, they do seem long-lived," Seoja remarked with a wry grin, wondered briefly whether the wine served today shared a similar secret, but that is a curiosity for another day.
As Jue Qing raised his own cup, a sudden crash from across the hall sent the tea spilling. The gathering had grown rowdy, retainers, bored with idleness, sought excitement through drinking and gambling. Several rounds of Pai Sho had been organized, wagers stacking as high as their salaries.
Mayumi noticed the coins, and with a keen eye, recognized an opportunity, perhaps twofold.
The irony is not lost on the retainer from the Fire Nation.
"Hey, I know that look," Seoja said, noticing Mayumi's focus. "Don't even think about joining. Just because the Jianghu attracts rogues doesn't mean it lacks skilled Pai Sho players or hardened drinkers. Your stipend from the White Scholar should suffice."
"I agree," Jue Qing added while unfurling a parchment in his possession for reading. "Such diversions are obstacles to enlightenment."
Mayumi acknowledged their warnings but could not resist a rare opportunity. "You three, stay here."
Afterwards...
Later, coins counted, Mayumi found herself victorious. Many opponents had succumbed to sleep or shock at being bested by a newcomer. Generously, she returned much of the ill-gotten gains, keeping only enough to reward herself. In a session of simultaneous Pai Sho and wine, she had quietly increased her fortune, a feat only possible for those born with a measure of inherited traits.
"Not bad," Seoja remarked as Mayumi returned to the table, a small pouch of gold coins in hand. Though Jue Qing still disapproved of indulgence, he allowed a faint nod of approval for her measured restraint before returning to reading a manuscript.
"W-what did I miss?" Kiviuq murmured, rousing like a slumbering bear who is unaware of the tumultuous matches and drinking bouts. Mayumi merely explained the subtleties of Pai Sho or her mother's tolerance for wine. Nevertheless, the four merely continued to kill some time.
"Still poring over that prophecy, are you?" Seoja remarked, noticing the monk Jue Qing engrossed in the aged manuscript before him. The scroll, yellowed with time, was said to be a translation from the ancient script of the Air Nomads into the bureaucratic tongue of the Earth Kingdom.
"I only wish to be prepared," Jue Qing murmured, eyes never leaving the text. "In case it proves true."
Mayumi, careful not to reveal her own literacy, stole discreet glances at the parchment. To one with her quiet love for written words, the chance to glimpse a translated Air Nomad scripture is a rare privilege. Yet its contents confounded her. The prophecy spoke of a great queen who would arise in the Earth Kingdom's darkest hour, a bringer of both unity and carnage to a realm fractured by chaos. Given the present age of wars and bloodshed, it was all too easy to see why some would surrender to such apocalyptic hopes.
"This," Jue Qing said at last, noticing her curiosity. "Is known as The Great Cloud Sutra." His words came softly, almost as an afterthought. "I can make you a copy once this ordeal is over if you wish."
Before the Kyoshi Warrior can react by feigning ignorance, the brassy call of a suona blared through the hall.