19 Captain Zar'un

I hadn't been expecting visitors. Not from within these walls, not from without, and certainly not from the distant island thousands of miles away in whatever cardinal direction you chose to follow.

Little of note had come to pass in Taisho for the last month, not since the unfortunate necessity to clean house, execute one of my own men who had proven to be a hostile agent. I'd since let the matter pass into obscurity, passing it down the vine branch and focusing instead on that which was in my job description–to keep Taisho standing.

I'd been doing just that, and in spite of food shortages, a volatile situation on the streets, and a growing threat of external interference, a damn good job too. People within the inner walls were fed, safe, healthy

So why in spirits' name is a fire sage of the High Temple here?

"He requests permission to meet with you. He states-"

"I heard you the first time, Zhorou," I interrupted my ward with a dismissive wave of the hand. "Thank you."

"Should I…send him in?"

Is there any way of denying a sage an audience without being accused of heresy? I wondered to myself, no part of me eager to find out what it was that had inclined the High Temple to send one here. Perhaps a century ago, a visit from such a sage would have been met with open arms, an indicator of one's role to play in the search for the Avatar, be it simple nearby residents, a local government official, or if you were fortunate enough, a family member.

Now, on the other hand, reduced to little more than inquisitors of the Fire Lord's cult of personality, such a visit held far different connotations. So what is it then? Has word of the traitor spread? Were there concerns that there were more such as Gyani within these walls? For spirits' sake, what's happening?

Damnit.

"Yes, Zhorou!" I snapped before immediately compensating for my outburst and concluding with a sigh, "Send him in."

Zhorou left. In only a few seconds, an unknown future would step past the threshold of my office, no way in hell for me to know what to expect aside from the fact that it was nothing good. The initiative had to be my own. To lose it at any time would spell disaster for myself. I had to be the first to act. I stood in preparation, wishing for initiative, but not at all preparing to commit such a slight as refusing to bow to an emissary of that which defined what was a Fire National.

It would have helped to have known what to expect, but as a man much less my senior than I had anticipated entered, I found myself having already lost what little advantage I'd clung on to. Shyu. The Great Sage himself.

What the hell?

"I do hope my visit hasn't imposed on your duties," he said as he bowed, placing a haishu hand atop a cupped first as he bowed forward, prompting me to do the same which, following a brief pause of hesitation and silence, I did.

Damnit, Zhorou, I thought to myself, that critical piece of information the line between control over the situation, and it was all I could do to hold onto it now as I said as I rose, before Shyu could get another word in, "I trust your voyage west was without incident?"

"East actually," he corrected, raising himself from his bow. So he hadn't departed from the island, or had he really circumnavigated the entire continent?

He answered my unspoken question, asked sufficiently through my questioning look, saying, "I was pursuing reports of a suspected Avatar in Badaji, got passage up the Red and down Da Dongjiang."

"Through the Pass? Aren't those waters contested?"

"Times change. Mind if I sit?"

"By all means." I motioned towards the chair for him to sit, which he promptly did so, I myself sitting in spite of the number of questions going through my mind. Sages were still searching for the Avatar? Was it a formality, or legitimate interest? And what of the passage? Had the Navy finally ventured deep enough inland past the rivers to challenge the Earth Kingdom fleets?

"The reports in Badaji yield anything?" I asked.

"Baseless, I'm afraid," Shyu chuckled. "I wouldn't be speaking of it if they had.

Then again, I suppose I couldn't have expected the soft spoken man to be instantly recognizable to one such as Zhorou, raised in a separate continent, much more a separate world. The only reason I'd even recognized him in the first place was that his appointment as the next High Sage following his predecessor's untimely passing had created a clamor across the Fire Nation what with him being the youngest of his peers. I'd attended his ceremony, witnessing it from behind a double column formation of the Royal guard, but still recognizing the man's face today, a product of Azulon ridding the Fire Nation of the old and bringing in the 'new'. 'New' as far as the sages extended anyway, the man before me still at least a decade and a half my senior.

"So is it a similar report that brings you here?" I asked, getting down to the point perhaps quicker than I should have.

Shyu seemed to think likewise, as rather than answer my question directly, he asked instead, "About a month ago, you executed a soldier under your command by the name of Lee Shuni, is that correct?"

So he knew about that. I was surprised that such information had found its way into his hands. I would have suspected that The Fire Lord's office would have been inclined to keep such information on the down low, but I suppose as inquisitors of the Fire Lord's will, it made sense for them to be privy to such matters, especially when they concerned an enemy order thought long deceased.

"It is," I answered, figuring it a fool's bargain to try and deny it. I said nothing more, not wishing to possibly give the man any more than he had, to expose that whatever attempt I'd made to uncover the truth behind Gyani had led to one dead end after another.

"And I take it you took it as your responsibility to try and learn all there was to know about the man?"

"May I ask why it's of any importance?"

"That will be for later. I'll ask that you tell me what your inquiries have uncovered."

What had they? I had to ask myself. I'd put Zarrow on pursuing that which we had discovered, but we had both known it was simply to clear myself up to do that which was more important to keeping this city up and running. Nothing had been discovered. Hell, even now, Zarrow was, for all intents and purposes, ready to wrap things up himself. I didn't blame him. We'd been led to a dead end, and in spite of his failings with Gyani, he was needed elsewhere than filing blank paperwork.

Of course, the question now was, how did I phrase the truth in a fashion that wouldn't mark me a traitor of His Majesty Fire Lord Azulon.

"The trail, of course, went somewhat cold since his death."

"Of course," Shyu affirmed.

"But I've put men on keeping track of his case, closing any inquiries, and keeping an eye on the situation should any new leads arrive."

"The inquiries that are being closed?"

"I've put Lieutenant Zarrow, commanding officer of Lee Shuni's platoon, in charge of running final closing this case for the meanwhile, tying up loose ends and the like. I believe he should now be conducting final interviews for those marked as 'persons of interest' to ensure their stories are consistent and we're not missing anything."

A hand drifted to Shyu's chin where it rested, two fingers lightly rubbing the beard that sat there, considering that which I had said, his motives still impossible for me to decipher, but nevertheless, mortifying to me.

What was he after? What had brought him here? Was it Gyani, or was there more?

"Missing anything like what?" he asked.

"Like the possibility the threat Gyani posed may still linger."

"I believe you ended the threat he posed quite permanently, did you not?" There was some malice behind his words. Would he have preferred Gyani hadn't been executed?

"We did," I confessed, "but there is no such thing as being too careful."

"Hmm. And your lieutenant. These interviews are happening now?"

"They are."

His hand moved from his chin, and his posture straightened, his intent to stand already palpable. "I would like to observe the interrogation, if I may."

The same question popping into my head, over, and over, and over.

What are you after?

I asked just that, and his answer, needless to say, was not of the variety that I'd been expecting.

"Don't mistake the change of our allegiance indicative of a change of priority," he started, a slight, yet, perhaps mistakenly, somber smile rising to his face. "We may no longer serve an absentee Avatar, but us sages still are the spiritual head of our Nation, and our search still goes on."

"So that's it?" I asked. "You're here looking for hi-the Avatar?"

There was a pause. "We are," Shyu nodded.

Did he think?

"And…the man that was killed, Gyani, you think that he…?"

No, that wouldn't make sense. Gyani was decades younger than what the Avatar would have been, a little over a century old. There was no way that the man could have been Him.

"We're not discounting anything, but the circumstances surrounding his presence here and eventual death do warrant investigation. Now, may I see about attending this interrogation your lieutenant is performing?"

Taisho didn't possess dungeons, per se. Rather, there were tunnels intended for drainage, having been constructed by Taisho's previous earthbending occupants. Infrastructure that we would have preferred not gone to waste, we'd still faced the unfortunate task of needing to seal off key passages with poured concrete in order to prevent the city's less savory occupants from using them to access the inner city right under our noses. New tunnels had been constructed, even lower, running to the sea–a final parting gift of the prisoners of war who'd chosen service in the place of death. Even if Taisho had possessed dungeons, I imagined it would have sent the wrong message to question soldiers, who thus far have displayed no sign of treason, there for simple questioning.

Rather, the route we took would be constrained to the Taisho administrative tower, simply seeing us descend from my office down to the rooms particularly intended for such occasions.

"Alert me if I have any more visitors," I informed Zhorou as I departed alongside Shyu, met with a nod from the young squire.

A period of silence followed as we walked, myself not quite knowing what to ask, and Shyu not quite willing to provide any unnecessary answers to unspoken questions/

"I don't get it," I eventually settled on. "The man we executed was in his sixties. The Avatar would be pushing past a century if this was really him."

"It's a simple matter for a man to lie about his age."

"But a forty plus year difference? Come on. You could tell by looking at Gyani. That was one thing he told the truth about at least."

"Perhaps, but there are ways in which an individual's lifespan may be prolonged. Are you familiar with the Avatar Kyoshi?"

"I know the name, of course, but what of her?"

The man clicked his tongue, perhaps an indication of some despair of such knowledge having been lost over the last century, the Avatar and the concept surrounding it now more taboo than history. "It is said that aging is the result of the body deteriorating on the smallest, most invisible level. It could thus be prevented by a mastery over the body capable of taking inventory of one's parts, and restoring order to those which had lost it."

"Sounds theoretical more than anything else."

"Perhaps," Shyu sighed. "But the fact remains that Avatar Kyoshi reached two hundred and thirty years of age before passing away."

"Bullshit," I scoffed, prompting a curious look from Shyu to turn my way before I realized my lapse of judgment. "My apologies," I corrected myself. "But I knew Gyani for six years before I learned what he was, and believe me, with each passing year, you could see time taking its toll."

"Hmm, perhaps. Or he simply lost focus , fell out of balance."

"Out of balance, huh?" I didn't believe it. It felt to me like loose reasoning more than anything else, the vaguest connections drawn where none deserved to be.

"There are other theories too, of course."

"Enlighten me."

"There are theories of the world adjacent to our own, where the spirits reside. It is only conceptual,..."

"Much like everything else you preach."

"...but there are theories of a domain within known as the fog of lost souls, where one may lose all sense of time and place, but, it is however unlikely, as it is thought to be a prison, and it would make little sense for the spirits to imprison their Avatar. However, it is possible that the imbalance of conflict may have set them astray."

"It's beginning to feel more and more as though you people will attribute all the world's problems to a so-called 'off balance'."

"Our world does not act independently, Captain Zar'un, nor do theirs. They may have become separated in an age long ago, but they are still tied, bound to one another. As our world experiences conflict, the balance of theirs is disrupted, and when such occurs, it is us who see the consequences."

"Hmph," I scoffed. "And here I was being led to believe that the millions of deaths were the consequences of conflict in this world. Color me happy to know it's just a shift in some invisible spiritual energy."

"You are a cynic."

"I'm a man who, every day, watches as starving children kill each one another for some morsel of food or another. I know what this world is like. What makes you so certain this Avatar of yours, even if they somehow survived the Comet, didn't die elsewhere? How can you be sure they weren't reincarnated in the Earth Kingdom, killed in some raid, by starvation or disease, before having the chance to be identified?

"Spirits," I chuckled. "They could have been reincarnated into the Fire Nation already for all we know, right under our noses."

"We would know if they had."

"Because you've done such a damn fine job of keeping track of the Avatar so far, is that it?"

I was met with no response. Perhaps it was for the better as we had reached where Zarrow would be, his voice on the other side only a faint mumble. A simple two raps against the door, and it opened only a few seconds later following a brief cessation of his voice, and the opening and closing of another door that led into the observation room.

As Zarrow emerged from the dimly lit room, an expectant pair of eyes met mine, but when turning to Shyu, they noticeably widened, not too dissimilar from my own reaction upon having first witnessed one of his standing. I figured it a kindness to not leave Zarrow with the same sense of confusion that I had, and so, for his sake, spoke first, saying, "Lieutenant, this is High Sage Shyu of the Great Temple."

A hand still on the knob of the door, Zarrow quickly recovered his composure and bowed to the man, being returned with the same kind courtesy, allowing me to continue, saying, "He wishes to observe your interrogation."

The lieutenant, just now rising from his bow, still appeared dumbstruck, now embroiled in the same state of overwhelming confusion that had taken me before, but notwithstanding, perhaps even eliciting some small jealousy from me, he made a rather speeding recovery, standing at attention as he said, the soldier in him taking over, "Of course, sirs! Will you be partaking as well?"

"That won't be necessary," Shyu said with a dismissive raise of his hand.

Zarrow nodded. "The observation room is right inside."

The observation room in question was a feat of modern engineering,a soundtight room designed to prohibit the escape of any noise from within, be it a hushed whisper to the agonizing screams of when asking nicely proved insufficient. Shyu and I stood, watching through a thin pane of glass, a soldier I recognized as Private Rumai Zamok, the limited garrison of Taisho affording me the opportunity to at least remember some names here and there. From where he sat, he would see little more than his own reflection staring back at him, bringing me to that which truly rendering this room the wonder that it was, observation chamber and interrogation room separated by concrete, a steel door, and most of all, a single pane of glass, silvered on only one side allowing for that which was unlit, in this case, us, to hide perfectly behind.

Lieutenant Zarrow returned to his post across the table from Private Rumai. It was clear that the severity of the encounter was far less than that which it would be for a true enemy of the state. The man's hands were unbound, free to move as they pleased, but nonetheless, he appeared nervous. I chuckled at the thought of how he'd react knowing just who waited on the other side of the mirror.

"My apologies for the interruption," Zarrow said. "Shall we continue, then?"

"Of course." Rumai cleared his throat. "I was just talking about how the last time I talked to him was about a month before he got caught. He'd gotten really quiet in the weeks before he was arrested."

"Do you have any idea of why that may have been?"

"I…I couldn't say. In hindsight, it feels like he may have been trying to do me a favor?"

"So he was trying to protect you?"

"Maybe, I guess? I don't know."

"Why would he try to protect you? Was there something you knew, something you're not telling me, Private?"

"No! It wasn't just me, but the others too. We all realized that he'd been acting a bit odd, a bit quiet before he got picked up. Nothing to do with me in particular, but…but I think he didn't want to rope us in on whatever it was he was doing."

"You're taking a big risk speaking of him this way," Zarrow trailed off.

I noticed the look of curiosity in Shyu's eyes as Rumai said his piece. "He's telling the truth," I confirmed. "Others said the same, that he'd gotten quiet near the end there with everyone."

"When was this?"

"Around the middle of Summer when his silence started, I guess."

"So around the time of the Summer Solstice?"

"Sure, I guess," I shrugged. Don't know what that has to do with anything.

Beyond the glass, Zarrow continued. "And what about before he was picked up? Did he say anything to you that seemed out of the ordinary?"

"No, not really. It was a sudden shift, nothing to indicate something was wrong."

"Oh come on, Rumai. We both know you two were close enough that he would have said something to you in particular?"

"Me in particular? You know Lee! He was like that with everyone; treated us like his kids or some shit. Would gather us together, talk to us, we all looked up to him, sir."

"Is this true?" Shyu asked me back on our side of the world.

"Hm," I nodded my head. "Don't get many elders in the garrison. Shuni, I mean, Gyani was a breath of fresh air when he came along. He slapped some sense into our youth, mellowed them out, brought them in line with the carrot rather than the stick. Hard to remember how we got on without him before."

I remembered how, we didn't. Elitist children from the mainland, and the first wave of slumdog dipshits, nipping at one another's heels all day and all night. Then Shuni had come around, given them both some sense of stability, Zarrow one of the first among them, and here he was, now tracking down every last lead of the traitor that'd once been his friend and mentor. I truly did pity the man.

"And the things he said?" Zarrow asked Rumai.

"You remember as well as I do. He had…interesting ideas. Talked about how everything the Fire Nation taught us was a matter of extremes and absolutes that, more likely than not, were false. How we likely didn't occupy nearly as much territory as we pretended to, how it was very likely we hadn't killed every last Air Nomad, you know. We tolerated it, sure, but…never thought he'd actually be a traitor."

My head turned to Shyu, myself sure that the mention of the last example was sure to have caught his attention. And that it had, his eyes wide, turning to me before immediately shoving past me to knock on the door, immediately distracting the gaze of Zarrow, mid sentence, as well as that whom he interrogated.

What the hell are you doing, Shyu?

Zarrow, now facing the door, held a finger up to Rumai, indicating for him to stay where he was as he approached the door, opening it to reveal Shyu, and me behind him.

"I apologize for the intrusion," Shyu stated. "But I was hoping I could possibly speak to the young private.

The young private in question, where he sat, now appeared even more paralyzed and scared shitless than he had before, no doubt recognizing the man in the red ceremonial garment.

"I-uh," Zarrow turned to Rumai, then back to Shyu. "Of course. Rumai, this High Sage Shyu of the Great Temple."

It was then that Rumai seemed to finally understand the significance of that who he was facing enough to, with a loud creak of his chair, stand from where he'd been seated, and promptly bow, his legs shaking beneath him, threatening to buckle at any moment resulting in what would no doubt be a painful collapse.

Shyu bowed back, saying as he rose, fearing, with good reason, that the young man would fail to do so on his own, "You may rise. You are not in any trouble, private. Please, sit."

As Rumai sat, Lieutenant Zarrow turned his head towards me, no doubt curious of what was occurring here, finding him and me in the same unfortunate boat. I could only shrug in response, no more in the know than he was.

"You mentioned he spoke of the Air Nomads, correct?"

"Among other things, yes? Why? Is it…is that important?"

"He's asking the questions, private," Zarrow reprimanded him, no doubt now displaying the same hesitation of Shyu's motives that I'd borne before, thinking him more an inquisitor than a sage, not privy to the interesting conversation we'd shared, and the insight that'd been gleamed. Zarrow wished to display nothing less than an airtight ship, free of any more leaks that may beg for the attention of a vengeful lord.

"Right, sir. Sorry, sir."

The play was once again left to Shyu who, frankly, seemed less bothered by Rumai's questioning than he did by Zarrow's interruption. He moved past it, however, as though pressed for time, perhaps wishing to get his thoughts out in the open air before they faded into oblivion. "Did he mention anything more of the Air Nomads? Anything possibly connected to that line of reasoning?"

"No? I don't…think so. In hindsight, I think I remember him going quiet right after mentioning it, as though he'd let it out by accident, but I might be remembering wrong. Could just be thinking about that since, well, we know now who he really was…"

The answer was an unsatisfactory one, as I could tell by the expression on Shyu's face, though he carried on, clearly not intent on abandoning this train of inquiry.

"Gyani…you are positive that he was not a firebender, correct?"

At the very least, he'd done some research ahead of his arrival here. But this line of questioning? Where's he going with this?

"Yes."

The kid's spooked. The questions, they make no sense. Damnit, Shyu. Can't you see this is accomplishing nothing?

"And nothing else either? Not water, earth, ai-"

"Shyu," I found myself forced to interrupt him. "That's enough. You aren't going to learn anything that you haven't already."

I found it interesting that it was both Rumai and Zarrow who demonstrated far more of a reaction to my intrusion than Shyu did, who simply turned to me, eyes wide, and shook his head, as though realizing himself that he'd gotten carried away. "My apologies. All in good time."

All in good time.

Zarrow looked to me, a questioning look in his eyes, having finally recovered from the initial shock of watching his commanding officer directly question the will of the High Sage. I understood his question, and nodded.

"Private Rumai, you can go now."

The boy did not move just yet, instead turning his head toward Shyu, who simply cocked his head towards the exit with a slight smile on his face that seemed to apologize where his voice failed.

The young soldier did as he was bid, and departed from the room, leaving only the three of us in the room for questioning, a heavy silence preceding the inevitability of one of us speaking first.

It proved to be Shyu who broke the silence, sighing before saying, "I'm sorry. I do believe I got carried away there. There is no need to rush. All in good time.

With that, he followed in leaving the room, now leaving me as well as lieutenant Zarrow with the selfsame question.

All in good time?