"Hm..." The girl frowned thoughtfully. "Like what happened with the Mechanist?"
"As one example." I nodded. "I'd rather spend a few extra days running myself ragged and losing sleep now than spend the next ten years kicking myself because we never ended up with competent healers, irrigators, and all the other useful people we'll need. Not to mention that I'd hate to see all the work we've already put into this go to waste."
"I see. Then what's with those odd inquiries of yours into those even stranger statistics... and the mercenary?"
Oh.
So she already knew.
Though, really, it would've been stranger if she hadn't.
There was a very good chance the princess was asking that question on Ozai's behalf.
"Oh, they've already found the mercenary?" By then we'd reached my quarters, and I opened the door. "That part's simple enough. Since everyone has gone to such lengths to create this image of the Fire Herald as some terrifying mountain of muscle, it'd be foolish not to take advantage of it.
"After all, who's going to suspect the quiet, unassuming young warrior in the entourage of the fearsome Fire Herald when standing right beside him is a hulking brute who matches the wildly exaggerated descriptions of said Herald almost perfectly?"
I sprinkled a handful of fragrant herbs into the teapot. A kettle of fresh water was already waiting nearby, courtesy of the palace plumbing. A small effort on my part, and it was merrily bubbling away.
"A cup of tea, Your Highness?"
Hm. That look on her face... Ah, right. I'd unconsciously slipped into Iroh's manner of speaking, and the princess wasn't exactly his greatest admirer.
"An interesting idea." The princess took a seat at the table and nodded her acceptance. "But what about your search? Those parameters are awfully strange. What does the full moon have to do with anything?"
Yeah... It had been naive of me to think she'd simply let the subject drop. Well, I'd had this explanation prepared for quite some time.
"That story is even stranger than the search criteria themselves. While I was in the North, I happened to have a conversation with a few waterbenders about the meaning of life..."
"I take it they didn't survive the conversation," the firebender remarked knowingly over the rim of her teacup.
"No, why wouldn't they? They survived the conversation just fine. They didn't survive parting from us—they literally hanged themselves from despair. But that's beside the point." I waved a hand dismissively. "The point is, there was a rumor circulating among them about an extraordinarily powerful witch from the Southern Water Tribe who had nevertheless been captured by our forces."
"And what's the problem?" the princess asked, arching an eyebrow.
"The problem is that, according to the Northerners, she escaped from prison and is now living somewhere in the archipelago."
She nearly choked on her tea.
"What? How? I thought our prisons were escape-proof."
"Well, the Avatar managed to break into the floating prison with ridiculous ease," I pointed out.
"That's hardly a fair comparison." She took another sip.
"Even so, I decided the rumors were worth checking. They're nearly fifty years old, but if there's even a chance that a witch skilled enough to escape a maximum-security prison is hiding practically on our doorstep, it'd be foolish not to investigate."
"What could a single fugitive possibly accomplish? Besides..." She crossed one leg over the other. "If this happened half a century ago, she has to be at least seventy by now! She should be falling apart."
"One such 'old relic' sank a couple of our cruisers and scattered an entire company of firebenders, despite having spent several nights without sleep beforehand running through the city intercepting our artillery shells."
"So you say..." The princess regarded me skeptically. "And how exactly could the Northerners know about something like that when even we don't?"
"I have no idea how the Northerners learned about the incident. I only spoke with people who knew about the witch secondhand. But my guess is that, back then, contact between the two tribes still existed, and the witch managed to get word to someone she knew. Besides, for a powerful enough waterbender, the sea surrounding the islands is hardly much of an obstacle."
"All right. I assume you found something in the archives, or you wouldn't have started sending officials all over the archipelago on such an unusual assignment."
"I did. The prison warden did his best to keep everything quiet, but he couldn't erase every trace from the records. For example..." I took a sip of tea. "'Death of Prisoner Number 734.' It happened on the night of a full moon, when waterbenders are at the height of their power."
"So? She tried to make use of her abilities when they were strongest, pushed herself too far, and died. I've heard of similar cases."
"And once again, Your Highness, you're absolutely right. By itself, it's a perfectly ordinary incident. But if you examine the prison guards' payroll records, you'll notice that the week after Prisoner Number 734 died, ten guards stopped receiving their salaries. That starts looking a bit suspicious, doesn't it?" She nodded with growing interest. "Dig a little deeper, and you'll discover that every single one of them had been on duty the night our prisoner supposedly died."
Oh.
Her eyes went wide.
A heartbeat later, they narrowed into a dangerous squint.
The funniest part was that I really had found all of this in the archives. Fortunately, the Fire Nation's bureaucracy and recordkeeping were exceptionally well organized, and the central archives carefully preserved every list, rescript, plan, and order relating to special facilities: prisons, forts, fortresses, government offices... essentially anything from the level of a moderately sized town's magistrate and up.
True, if I hadn't already known what I was looking for, where to look, and how bureaucrats preferred to bury their mistakes, I'd never have managed to uncover anything truly worthwhile.
"It sounds plausible," Azula said with a sly smile, "but there's one flaw in your theory, Herald."
(End of Chapter)
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