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Lucky to Be Born
It was almost stiflingly hot in the hallway, the sliding paper screens doing little to shield the narrow space from the summer sunshine, but entirely blocking the breezes that would have compensated for it. General Iroh's sigh held more than one kind of relief as he pushed the light barrier aside and slipped out into the relatively cool garden. Escape from the other generals had been easy enough to attain, but escape from the heat inside the Royal Palace, with its thousands of candles and braziers burning at all hours of the day and night, was harder to come by.
It didn't used to bother me so much, Iroh thought, settling onto one of the many stone benches that dotted the garden and inhaling deeply. Dozens of varieties of exquisite flowers and aromatic herbs washed him in their fragrance. I must have been away too long this time, getting used to a different climate.
A distinctly human movement some distance away, near the koi pond at the center of the garden, let Iroh know that he was not alone. The other person hadn't noticed him yet, however, and he permitted the ignorance for a few minutes while he rose to his feet and approached silently, unable to keep the grin from growing on his face. When only a few yards separated them and the other was still oblivious to his presence, he spoke up, loudly.
"Great Agni, woman, should you be on your feet in your condition?"
To her credit, she hardly jumped at all, only tensed a little while she looked up from her fish-feeding and met his eyes. Instantly, her eyes lit up as bright as the sun and her grin matched his own. "Iroh! Oh, it is good to see you!" With care, she swept forward to meet him in a familial embrace.
"It's good to see you too, Ursa…though I must confess, I didn't expect there to be quite so much of you to see! When I left, you were barely showing."
"Well, what did you expect, staying away for six months?" Princess Ursa scolded him gently, resting her hands on her enormously pregnant abdomen. "I missed you."
"Duty calls," Iroh shrugged. "Despite the rumors among the men, I can't be in two places at once. I missed you too, Ursa. I'm glad I didn't miss the little one's arrival. When can I expect to meet my nephew, anyway?"
Ursa raised one elegantly painted eyebrow. "Nephew? What makes you so sure it will be a boy?"
"It had better be a boy," Iroh teased. "I'll never forgive you if you make me waste my first chance to play uncle on a girl. I'm no good with girls. But you didn't answer my question: when?"
"Possibly today," Ursa said frankly. Iroh felt a little surge of anxiety, but said nothing. "Dr. Chung thinks I'm already late, and I believe him. There's no way the baby could have gotten this big without taking extra time to grow. But he says it's not unusual for the firstborn to be—Iroh, what's wrong?"
Iroh made a self-deprecating chuckle, embarrassed that she had detected his nervousness. "It's not the sort of thing a man likes to hear, that the woman he's talking to could drop her baby at any moment. Especially since I could never bring myself to leave you alone in order to fetch a midwife, so I'd be stuck delivering it."
Ursa laughed at that, a full-throated laugh that somehow made her seem both older and younger than her seventeen years. "Are you telling me," she giggled, "that the formidable Dragon of the West feels faint-hearted at the thought of assisting a woman in childbirth?"
"Oh, yes," he said earnestly. "I may be a twenty-year veteran of warfare, well accustomed to blood and smoke and the screams of the dying, but there are some horrors no man should have to witness, much less participate in. Call me once the baby is out and cleaned up enough to be presentable."
Ursa set her hands on her hips, which made her look uncannily like a large decorative urn. A very large urn. "Horrible, am I?" she retorted with mock umbrage. "You had better start running, General, and pray to the spirits that I'm too heavy to catch you!"
Iroh backed up a step or two, raising his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "Now, now, milady. Don't be so blinded by your thirst for revenge that you wind up doing harm to your innocent child." He sobered. "In all seriousness, though, is it really safe for you to be up and about like this, without even a maid to attend you just in case? If nothing else, at least permit me to drag a bench over here so you can sit."
"You're beginning to sound like my lord husband," Ursa said wryly, "only more polite. He's horrified at the thought that I might damage his progeny through my criminal carelessness, doing dangerous things like taking walks in the gardens. But if commoner women can keep on working right up to the day they deliver—and they can, I've seen them when I've been out in the city—I don't think I'm taking any risk by getting some fresh air now and again. Besides, it's gotten so the effort of sitting down and standing up again is worse than just staying on my feet."
"If you're out here against Ozai's wishes, you're taking a risk in any case. My brother's temper is—"
"—never directed against me," Ursa finished for him. "You know that as well as I do. I am not blind to my husband's faults, but I have never felt fear in his presence. He would not harm me, especially not when I am so close to presenting him with his firstborn."
"That reminds me," Iroh said, hoping to brighten the mood of the conversation again, "how does my little brother feel about the, ah, delay in the proceedings? His patience has never been any better than his temper—if I can't wait, he must be tearing his hair out."
"Actually, he couldn't be happier that I'm so late," Ursa replied. "He's hoping I'll bear on the Solstice, for the luck."
Iroh nodded. It was a widely held belief in the Fire Nation that people born on the Summer Solstice, when the sun's power was at its peak and the ascendancy of the Fire element was obvious to the world, would never run out of good luck. (Presumably, the other nations had similar folklore about the midpoints of their respective seasons.) "How about you? Do you think a Solstice birth is worth the wait?"
"Honestly? No," Ursa sighed, pressing her hands against her lower back. "It's easy for my lord husband to say he wants a lucky festival child; he's not the one carrying it until then." She winced suddenly. "Or being kicked by it. Finally woke up from your nap, did you?" she addressed her belly.
Iroh smiled broadly. "Active, is he?"
"Or she," Ursa reminded him. "And yes. Would you like to feel?"
"I shouldn't," said Iroh. "It would be unseemly for me to touch you there."
"You won't have to touch my bare skin. Nowadays the kicks come right through the cloth. And I refuse to be the only one battered by this little warrior. Come here, Uncle."
She motioned him over, and he acquiesced, letting her press his broad, calloused hand against her swollen torso. Almost immediately, he felt the thumps against his palm, as strong and nearly as rhythmic as a heartbeat, and he thought: My nephew's already a little fighter!
Or my niece, he grudgingly corrected himself. In any case, there was something oddly enchanting about being kicked so vigorously through thin layers of flesh and fabric by an unborn baby. It was an experience he'd rarely had while his own wife was expecting; Lu Ten had been much less rambunctious. For a moment, he was struck by the delightful absurdity of it. If any man alive should have been jaded to the small wonders of life, it was him, Prince Iroh, one of the most decorated generals in the Fire Nation army as well as the Heir Apparent to the Fire Nation throne. He should have been too battle-hardened and too lofty to take joy in such a universal affirmation of life, and yet here he was, utterly captivated by the tiny blows being delivered to his hand by his brother's child.
"Brother!" came an insistent shout from the end of the garden closest to the Palace. "And—Ursa? What are you doing out here?"
Iroh guiltily let his hand fall away from Ursa's abdomen and turned to address his younger brother, Prince Ozai, who was already stomping toward the two of them—not angry per se, but definitely in some kind of agitated mood. "Are you asking her or me?" he said evenly.
"Both of you!" Ozai barked. "Brother, why did you run away so suddenly after the council? General Eitan shared around a jar of his famous apricot wine. You would have enjoyed it."
"I am and will always remain a tea man," Iroh responded, but Ozai was already rounding on his wife, taking her hands in his.
"And you! You should be indoors resting! I've told you time and time again not to risk yourself and the baby this way! Where is your maid?"
"I don't know, my lord husband," Ursa said calmly. "I deliberately evaded her so that I could come out here. I won't be cooped up. Will you continue to embarrass us by shouting in front of your honored brother?"
"Perhaps I should be on my way," said Iroh.
"No," Ozai said, releasing Ursa's hands. "I apologize, brother."
"Don't apologize to me. She's the one you're shouting at—with little reason, I might add. I've been here with her and you know I would never allow any harm to befall her or the child."
"Why should I apologize for trying to protect you?" Ozai said to Ursa.
"I don't need protection. My lord husband, being pregnant is not an emergency."
"Not now. It may become one," Ozai replied with a brief sidelong glance at Iroh that explained more than his blustering words ever could.
He fears she will meet the same fate as Choren. But he's far too proud to admit that it is a fear, so instead he tries to corral her and scolds her for the slightest infraction. It would have been almost cute if it hadn't been so serious. Iroh couldn't decide whether Ozai's frantic attitude represented genuine concern for the woman he loved and the life in her womb, or merely meticulous preservation of what he perceived as his property. Theirs had never seemed a particularly loving marriage—respectful and occasionally passionate, but not affectionate—but maybe things had changed while Iroh had been away. Expecting a child could do that to a man.
"If it does, we can worry about it then. It's not worth being imprisoned in the meantime."
"You think I'm imprisoning you?"
"I don't think you mean to. But that's what it feels like."
Ozai slouched, scrubbing his face with the heels of his hands. Since he was a tall man, the slump in his posture was dramatic. Iroh suppressed a smile and pretended not to be watching. If that's not father-to-be jitters, then I don't know what is. He recognized the symptoms from his own first-hand experience.
"Come on," the younger prince said abruptly, setting his hands on Ursa's shoulders and steering her back toward the Palace. "You've been out in the hot sun long enough for today, and we should start getting ready for supper."
"I think I'll be heading back inside as well," said Iroh, falling into step beside them. "I haven't even seen Lu Ten since I got back, and his schooling will be over for the day soon."
"You will be coming to supper, won't you, brother?" Ozai asked pointedly.
"Of course!" Iroh replied with an expansive gesture. "After six months of field rations, I wouldn't miss a real meal for all the jewels in the Earth Kingdom!"
"I will insist on hearing all about your campaigns over the table," said Ursa. By that time, they were all inside, with Ozai hustling his pregnant wife down the corridor…in the opposite direction to the one Iroh needed to take in order to reach the Royal Grammar School.
The Dragon of the West sighed as he let his feet carry him. There was nothing he could do to help the situation. The baby would be born when it would be born, and until then there was little point in expecting Ozai to relax.
"All rise for His Most Exalted Excellency, Fire Lord Azulon!"
Iroh stood as smoothly as he could despite the slight twinges in his knees. It was only to be expected; he was pushing forty, after all, and he knew that before too many more years had passed, he would be longing for the old days of slight twinges. And at least he had it better—at the moment—than Ursa, who had to be helped clumsily to her feet by her husband, and only just made it upright in time for the Fire Lord's entrance.
Iroh pressed his lips together. When I am Fire Lord, pregnant women will be officially pardoned from observing that little bit of decorum.
Azulon entered flanked by valets and handmaidens…but no guards, which would have implied that the Fire Lord was not capable of defending himself. His gimlet eyes swept the room, taking in the attendees as they bowed to him, and settled on Ursa.
"I see Princess Ursa is dining with us this evening," he said simply.
"Yes, Father," Ozai replied. "I think the importance of the occasion outweighs what has, perhaps, been excessive caution on my part."
"Excellent," said Azulon, settling in his place at the head of the low table. "You may all be seated." The familiar rustle swept the hall as the royal family, visiting generals, and a few assorted dignitaries returned to their kneeling positions.
It was not exactly a formal state dinner, more the natural consequence of holding a war council so late into the afternoon that nobody wanted to start traveling again until the following morning. The generals, a few of them with their wives, were arrayed along the side of the table at Azulon's left hand, their proximity to the Fire Lord indicating their status and rank. The royal family similarly occupied the right side, first Iroh and a squirming Lu Ten (a good boy, he tried, but no one could reasonably expect an eight-year-old to have perfect poise under the eyes of all those military men), then Ozai and Ursa and Ursa's maid, there to assist the princess with the logistics of handling eating dishes at the distance required by her burgeoning belly.
It was a lopsided arrangement, the generals and other dignitaries far outnumbering the royals. Ursa and Ozai would have to breed like cat-rabbits to rectify the imbalance.
The first course was brought in. Iroh murmured a hasty reminder to Lu Ten to keep his elbows off the table, and then that pompous bastard, General Xiu, started speaking.
"Her Highness must be expecting very soon now. Within the week, unless I miss my guess."
"I certainly hope so, General," said Ursa. "Last week would have been satisfactory."
"But not ideal," Ozai cut in. "My hope is that she will hold out a few more days, until the Solstice."
"A worthy hope, indeed," said one of the younger generals, only recently promoted, whose name Iroh couldn't quite remember. "A royal prince or princess born on the that most auspicious day would be a great boon to the Fire Nation."
"Whenever it happens," Xiu dismissed the matter lightly, "can I safely assume there will be a celebratory feast?"
"Listen to you," Iroh quipped. "Not even through the soup yet, and your mind's already on future meals."
"I like to keep an organized calendar," Xiu sniffed. The man didn't even have the class to make a retort about Iroh's own fondness for meals, which was becoming more obvious of late as approaching middle age stored the pounds on a frame that was stout to begin with.
"If she bears between now and the end of the Solstice Festival," said Azulon crisply, "the birth celebration will be incorporated into the festivities. It would be wasteful to make a separate event of it. Hawks will be sent out as soon as we know."
"There is a possible way to gain more control over the matter, my lord," offered General Shen, whose pale, pinched features belied an affable, even solicitous personality. "Are you familiar with the properties of cinnabar root?"
"I am the Fire Lord, General Shen, not a botanist," Azulon said. Iroh knew his father well enough to realize that the statement was intended in mild humor, but Shen seemed to take it as a reproach.
"Please forgive my presumption, Sire. Cinnabar root is an herb occasionally used to treat, er, 'female complaints.' With care, it can be prepared into a drug that induces labor in women who are close to term."
"General, please! You're putting me off my dinner!" whined the Minister of Finance.
"No one asked your opinion, you old paper-pusher," Ozai sneered. "I think General Shen's suggestion could be extremely useful, and I'm sure my wife agrees."
"I'm seeing Dr. Chung again tomorrow," said Ursa. "I'll bring it up with him. Thank you for the information, General Shen."
"Now can we please change the subject?" begged the Minister, who looked faintly green.
"You can tell he never married," muttered Iroh. Lu Ten looked up at him inquisitively, and he responded with a wink. I'll tell you when you're older.
"Is there something you wish to discuss, Minister?" asked Azulon.
"Well, Sire, the Taiku Islands are expecting a record spice crop this year—"
"I must rephrase that question. Is there something interesting you wish to discuss, Minister?"
"I…suppose not, Sire," the Minister stammered, suddenly becoming very preoccupied with his dinner. Ursa bit her lip with, Iroh supposed, barely restrained laughter.
Iroh suddenly remembered her parting words to him as they left the garden. "I know!" he said. "I promised Princess Ursa that I would regale her with tales from the front!"
Xiu's mathematically precise mustache twitched. "With all due respect, Iroh, is that really necessary? Most of us have already heard it all, in today's council."
"No, what you heard were reports," Iroh corrected him. "This will be much more entertaining…provided my exalted father approves, of course."
Azulon paused before speaking. "Permission to boast granted, Prince Iroh."
With a sly look of triumph at Xiu and his nostril-flaring indignation, Iroh began.
It was hours before anyone managed to shut him up.
The family—except for their dour patriarch—lunched in the central garden the next day, placing plush cushions by the turtle-duck pond. Ursa perched on a padded bench at the very edge of the pond, the huge curve of her gravidity serving her for a table. Ozai sat next to her, some nameless conceit forbidding him from joining his brother and nephew on the humble grassy ground, or letting his wife tower above him as though on a throne. Lu Ten lay on his stomach, his slender legs kicking in alternation like a clockwork mechanism as he picked through his lunch with juvenile fussiness.
"I can't help but notice," said Iroh, "that after we all agreed to, and I quote, 'sit in the grass by the turtle-duck pond for lunch,' I am the only one who is both sitting and in the grass."
Lu Ten looked up guiltily. "Sorry, Dad," he said.
"It's all right, son, I was joking. You have the excuse of being too young to sit still, and Aunt Ursa has the excuse of being too pregnant to sit this far down. But Uncle Ozai, as far as I can tell, has no excuse at all."
"I'll stay with my wife and child, thanks all the same," Ozai replied tersely.
"Aunt Ursa, what did the doctor say?" Lu Ten piped up. "Are you gonna have the baby today?"
Ursa swallowed her mouthful of rice. "I don't know, Lu Ten. That's the thing about having a baby—you don't know exactly when until it happens."
"Didn't you ask him about that herb?" said Ozai.
"The cinnabar root? I did. He said that form of it is usually prescribed only when a woman's labor has been stopping and starting for hours. There is a small risk associated with using it, so it's not done lightly. But of course he'll give it to me if we insist."
"Why's it called labor?" Lu Ten asked through a mouthful of bean dumpling.
"Because it's very, very hard work, and don't talk with your mouth full," said Iroh.
"At this point," Ozai mused, taking a burnt bit of rice from his bowl and tossing it to the eager turtle-ducks, "I have a hard time seeing what we'd be risking by trying it. You're overdue, Ursa."
"This is new," she replied with a snigger. "Yesterday you were ready to put me under lock and key for safety's sake, and now you want me to take a labor-inducing drug?"
"No, not now," he said with a roguish grin in his voice that didn't reach his actual mouth. "Day after tomorrow. On Solstice."
"Of course," Ursa said with a roll of her sloe eyes. "How could I forget? My husband wants his eldest born lucky, and he'll resort to medical intervention to have his way."
"I think you should do it, Aunt Ursa," said Lu Ten. "I wanna see my little cousin!"
"I'm starting agree with the Minister of Finance," Ursa said dryly. "This is no topic for a mealtime conversation."
"We'll discuss it later," Ozai said softly, ruffling her hair.
"Lu Ten, tell Uncle Ozai and Aunt Ursa what you're learning in school," said Iroh, to break the tension.
"I'm learning all about what Grandpa did in the war when he was younger!" Lu Ten grinned, propping himself up on his elbows. "Did you know he got hit by two arrows in the battle of Gar Sai and still didn't stop attacking the enemy? I can't wait till I'm old enough to be a soldier!"
"That's good," said Ozai. "We all must set the example for our subjects. I'd still be out there myself, but we can't very well both risk our lives on the front lines. Father's not getting any younger."
"Wanna see me firebend?" Lu Ten piped up again, sitting up straight. "I can set a stick on fire on the first try every time now! Watch!" He held up his chopsticks and knitted his eyebrows in concentration.
Iroh deftly plucked the utensils out of his son's fingers. "How about," he said, "you demonstrate on something that won't need to be replaced? Go find a twig."
"Okay, Dad!" Lu Ten sprang to his feet and ran off.
"And get it off the ground!" Iroh called after him. "Don't damage the trees!"
"He's certainly a handful when he gets excited," Ursa observed.
"Don't worry," said Ozai. "Ours will be better behaved."
"There's nothing wrong with Lu Ten's behavior," Iroh defended his offspring. "He's only eight; what do you want from him?"
Lu Ten returned, carrying a dry stick about as long as his arm and as wide as two of his fingers. "Watch this!" he commanded the adults, holding it upright and striking a basic firebending stance. "Watch! You're not watching!"
"We are so watching," said Ozai. "Your form is off. Let Uncle Ozai show you." He rose from the bench and went to help Lu Ten correct his posture. Ursa shot Iroh a meaningful glance and inclined her head toward her husband, smiling serenely. The message was clear: He's practicing for fatherhood; isn't it sweet?
"There. I think you'll find the fire is much more obedient when you have the proper stance," Ozai said, backing off from the boy a few steps. Lu Ten screwed up his face again, and the end of the stick burst into a bright yellow flame.
In that instant, Ursa abruptly cried out, lurched backward on the bench, and toppled into the pond.
"Ursa!" Ozai shouted, running to assist her. But the bench was in the way; he couldn't reach her flailing hands. She was stuck, half in and half out of the pool, her head underwater, her legs kicking in futility, unable to right herself due to the awkwardness of her pregnant body. Bubbles rose to the surface in profusion. The turtle-ducks fled from the sudden turbulence. Iroh prepared to get up in order to render aid if needed, while Lu Ten simply gaped at the spectacle, allowing the flame on his stick to fizzle out.
On the verge of panic, Ozai finally skirted the bench and plunged right into the shallow water in order to prop his wife up. She gasped and coughed as soon as her face hit the air, clutching convulsively at him.
"Ursa! Speak to me! What happened? Is it time?"
Panting, Ursa looked her husband in the eye. The corners of her mouth quirked. Then she giggled. She tried to suppress it, but the laugh grew stronger until she was roaring with mirth at her own misfortune.
"She's gone mad," Ozai whispered, looking close to madness himself.
"She's not mad; she's laughing," said Lu Ten, giggling a little himself.
"I do apologize, my lord husband," Ursa chortled as the outburst subsided. "It's just that you looked so horrified when you brought me up…as if I'd been killed or something!"
"You might have been," he pointed out, lifting her to her feet so that she could clamber out of the pond. "You almost drowned, right in front of me!"
"I assure you, I did not even come close to drowning," she said. "I was underwater for less than a minute, and I was about to find the edge when you came to my rescue. For which I thank you, of course, my hero." She brushed her dripping, algae-festooned hair away from her face, still making little bursts of laughter. "I must be a sight! I'm completely soaked from the waist up!"
"There's mud on your gown too," Iroh offered, relieved that the crisis was over so quickly.
"What happened, anyway?" asked Ozai. "It's not your time, is it?"
"Oh, no," said Ursa. "Nothing like that. The baby just kicked me so hard—harder than it ever has. It was so startling that I lost my balance."
"Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine. Let's go get cleaned up." The two of them ambled off in the direction of indoors.
"I guess lunchtime is over, huh, Dad?" said Lu Ten.
"You guess right, son."
That evening was a sultry one, as if the air itself felt it hadn't been paying proper tribute to the summer season and was trying to catch up. With the Palace interior more stifling than ever, Iroh took a stroll around one of the upper terraces, to catch what breezes were available and admire the view and collect his thoughts.
For what had started as a simple alfresco family meal, lunch had certainly given him a lot to think about.
For instance, what exactly had caused Ursa's fall? Iroh had assured a fretting Lu Ten that it was not his fault, that it was just a coincidence that the baby kicked her right as the boy bent fire…but he wasn't sure himself. Given the extreme likelihood that the princess was carrying a firebender—the gift ran strongly in her family as well as in the royal lineage—it was indeed possible that the child sensed its cousin's use of the art, and reacted reflexively.
But that was a minor matter. More puzzling, and thus more potentially disturbing, was the near-total shift in Ozai's attitude since the previous day, upon which Ursa had commented. Up until the pond mishap, he had been so calm and personable, almost the opposite of the desperately overprotective man who had scolded his wife in the koi garden—more composed, in fact, than Iroh had seen him in years. He was even willing to expose her to the real, if very small, risks associated with the use of cinnabar root, when before the imagined risks of her daily exercise had been too much for him.
It seemed to Iroh that it had started with General Shen's mention of the herb over dinner. How had he put it? "There is a possible way to gain more control over the matter." The well-intentioned fellow didn't know it, but he had spoken the magic words: gain more control. Even as a small child, Ozai had always had a thirst for control; he was almost obsessed with his need for it. He had always hated being the younger brother because it meant that one more person had authority over him, rather than vice-versa.
In fact, the only person over whom the prince had ever refrained from exerting as much power as possible…was Ursa. Iroh had always appreciated and admired her for inspiring that self-restraint in her prideful husband; he hated to think that that might be changing.
"Ozai."
Iroh pulled up short. Something was afoot—that voice was Ursa's, and she never addressed her husband by name.
"Ozai, my lord husband, please look at me."
It was coming from one of the balcony extensions of the terrace. Iroh threw good manners to the wind and huddled behind a pillar to eavesdrop on what must be quite a serious conversation.
"Are you commanding me to take the herb?" Ursa was saying. "If you are, I will not defy you, but be honest with me."
Please tell her no, brother, Iroh thought. Please let her remain the one person you choose not to order around.
"I…suppose I am," Ozai said. "Tomorrow, you will go back to Dr. Chung and tell him to give you a dose of it. The next morning, if you have not borne the baby yet, you will take it. And we will have a lucky Solstice baby, and all will be well."
Iroh closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the pillar. The only hope now was that Ozai would settle back down after the birth…but it seemed a faint hope indeed. A newborn baby would be an even richer source of worries and excuses for him to be dominating, and by the time it was old enough not to excite its father's controlling temper automatically, the habit would be ingrained.
"Thank you for being straightforward with your wishes, my lord husband," said Ursa.
"It would not come to this if it were not so important," said Ozai. "But there is more at stake here than just a Solstice birth. You're so late already—what if you need this to get it started at all? And as long as we're taking that route, why not time it for the most auspicious day?"
"You may be right," said Ursa. "And I do like seeing you in command of yourself, instead of raging at a situation that is entirely out of your hands."
"You have never looked more beautiful to me, either, not even when you stood before me in your bridal raiment."
Silence fell, but it was the silence of something big happening that didn't make much noise. Curiosity overwhelmed Iroh's better judgment, and he peeked around the pillar—
—to see Ozai savagely kissing Ursa on the mouth, his powerful hands grasping her shoulders so tightly that they were white at the knuckles. Her arms hung at her sides and she did not seem to be quite returning the kiss, but she wasn't fighting it either. Eavesdropping was one thing, voyeurism something else altogether, so Iroh turned away and quietly returned the way he had come.
He exited onto another balcony some distance away and pretended to be an innocuous stargazer until he heard his brother's firm footsteps marching along the terrace. Ozai didn't notice him there, and he waited until the heavy tread had faded away in the direction of the stairs before returning to the other balcony to check on Ursa.
"Is the evening finding you well, my recently soaked sister-in-law?" he jested, the picture of casual ignorance.
"I've decided to use that herb," Ursa said evenly, not turning away from the balcony railing. "My lord husband made me see some things I hadn't considered."
"Such as?" Iroh prompted.
"It's not just my child…it's not even just our child. It belongs to the Fire Nation, as we do. My duty as a princess is to my people, and if the best thing I can do for them is give them a royal child who was born lucky, then that's what I must do."
"That's one way of looking at it, I suppose."
Ursa sighed and made a wistful smile. "You're so wise, Iroh. And caring, but you're a bit too late. The matter is settled. If I think about changing my mind now, I will never come to a decision."
She's protecting him, Iroh realized. She doesn't want me to be angry with him for commanding her, so she pretends it is her choice. And in a way, it was. Ozai had very conveniently left her a means to disobey him, by telling her to be the one to get the drug from the doctor—if she came back and said he had none of it prepared, how would Ozai know whether she spoke truth or not? The question was whether he had done so on purpose…
"Take heart, Ursa. There's still time for you not to need it after all."
"Thank Agni for small comforts," she murmured. "Really, I just want to get this over with. I knew being pregnant would not be easy, but I never imagined it would change so many things that were better left as they were."
The next day passed without incident, and so it was that on the following morning, on the Solstice, Ursa used the cinnabar root medicine.
It was almost shocking how quickly it took effect. She swallowed the drug right after breakfast (it was to be taken with food), and within the hour had been sequestered in the birthing room, grunting and panting and occasionally crying out at a strong contraction, while Ozai paced in the antechamber.
"She's going to be at this quite a while, you know," Iroh advised his younger brother while passing through. "You'll wear yourself to exhaustion if you don't take it easy."
"I know," Ozai muttered dully, slumping against the wall. "But what else can I do?" With the situation once again out of his control, he was completely at loose ends.
"I know just the thing," Iroh said, clapping his little brother on the shoulder. "Come with me to the solarium, young man. It's time you learned to appreciate the calming effects of a nice hot cup of jasmine tea."
Five cups of jasmine tea and nearly two hours later, Ozai was still all nerves, so Iroh let him indulge himself in the more dramatically calming effects of a nice cup of hot sake.
It was sometime after the four-hour mark had passed that the screaming began in earnest. Ursa's cries up to that point had been short, sharp and resolute, the sounds of a woman determined to outlast her pain and, perhaps, a little angry about it. Now they were longer and beginning to take on a more frightened quality, as if she were no longer sure that she could outlast it.
In other words, the labor was proceeding normally. This was of little comfort, however, to Ozai, who vanished somewhere in the maze-like rooms of the Palace to confront his terrors alone.
At the ten-hour mark, with sunset approaching, a second midwife was called in to relieve the first one. Ursa's sounds of distress were quite appalling by this point; it seemed there was no place in the Palace one could go to escape them entirely, and Iroh was beginning to worry.
He cornered the first midwife as she caught her breath in the corridor, wiping her hands on a towel. She was about thirty, which was to say she was about twenty-five years younger than Iroh's default mental image of a midwife, and she looked as sweaty and disheveled and drained as if she had just given birth herself.
"How is it going in there?" Iroh asked her.
"Not well at all, I'm afraid, Your Highness. The baby's turned the wrong way—"
"You mean it's breech? Feet first?"
"If only it were that simple, my prince. I've sat breech births before; usually the worst of them is that they take longer…" Iroh looked down at the towel being wrung in the poor woman's hands and realized with growing horror that it was blood she was rubbing from her skin.
"Just how bad is it?" he demanded, taking hold of her upper arms, his stomach knotting.
"I've never seen it before," the midwife hedged, "though of course I haven't been in the craft long…the baby's gotten turned sideways somehow, and I haven't been able to right it. Her body is trying to bear it as it is, and it's stuck…" She trailed off miserably.
Iroh bit his lip. "The new midwife—she has more experience with this sort of thing?"
"Oh, yes, my prince. Although…"
"Although what, woman?"
Another wail of agony spilled out into the hallway, nearly startling the skin right off the message-bearer who had just peeked into the antechamber to check progress now that the new midwife had arrived. There was a muffled shout of annoyance, and the messenger went scampering away again.
Iroh gritted his teeth. "Although what?" he asked the young midwife again.
She gazed back at him with a steely expression. "Her Highness is losing too much blood. Even if the birth is successful, she may not live."
Momentarily stunned, Iroh released his captive, and she hurried down the corridor to who-knew-where, letting the bloodied towel fall to the floor. Once she was out of sight, he sank into a sitting position, trying not to hear Ursa's moans even as he stared at her blood on the wadded-up cloth. The air in the hallway was sweltering and tinged faintly with smoke from the Solstice firecrackers being set off all over the city. Iroh's earlier words came back to haunt him. Blood and smoke and the screams of the dying…Ursa is dying. Choren had sounded less despairing in her labor, and she had been dead of puerperal fever within a month of delivering. It was something of a shock to Iroh to realize how alarmed he was at the thought of losing his sister-in-law. She was increasingly the only adult around the Palace whose company he genuinely enjoyed, the only person he could really relate to in the power-obsessed and all but humorless world of Fire Nation politics.
He cringed to contemplate what it would mean for Ozai if Ursa's mitigating influence on his imperious temper was lost.
Ozai…
Iroh heaved himself to his feet. He would have to find his brother soon to have any hope of damage control once the news got around that his wife, and the child she was struggling to bear, were in mortal danger. He hoped the man had gotten drunk enough to be harmless.
After many inquiries and much looking around, Iroh found the other prince in the place he should have perhaps looked first: the great shrine to Agni. The air inside was heavy and fragrant with the smoke from a few dozen joss sticks of costly incense, a testament to the frantic sincerity of Ozai's prayers.
He wasn't praying now. He had retreated to a corner of the temple and wedged himself between the wall and a gilded statue of a famous Fire Sage, all but invisible to anyone who was not actually looking for a person to be there, to marinate in his own misery. It was something he had often done as a child, when his temper had grown too much even for him and he had sought to hide from his own turbulence…as well as from the consequences of unleashing that temper.
Iroh approached cautiously. "It's not healthy, you know, to stay in here with so much smoke in the air." Blood and smoke and the screams of the dying…
"I'll take my chances," Ozai growled darkly. "No point in suddenly learning the value of caution now, eh?" On the word "caution," he made a slicing motion in the air, accompanied by a spurt of fire.
"Ozai, brother, you have to calm down," said Iroh with wide eyes. "Better firebenders than you have fallen victim to their own rage. It'll burn you up."
"Calm down?" Ozai spat contemptuously. "My wife is dying, Iroh, and our child with her. Can you even imagine what—" He broke off suddenly, remembering, aghast at his own thoughtlessness. "Brother, I'm sorry!"
"You are forgiven," Iroh said simply. There are some horrors no man should have to witness… After a brief pause, the elder brother lowered himself to the closest prayer mat, crossed his legs, and tucked his hands into his sleeves. Close to the floor, the air was clearer. "Come out of there and sit with me, brother."
Ozai did so, his posture simultaneously rigid and slumped, indicating the tremendous conflict churning within him.
There was silence for a few moments, broken only by the hiss and sputter of the joss sticks and hundreds of candles. Then came Ozai's voice, sounding small and nearly defeated.
"How did it all go so wrong? After all I did to protect her…I told her not to take risks by running around! That damned woman!"
"Hey, now!" Iroh said. "You shouldn't be so quick to blame Ursa, and you definitely shouldn't curse her! We don't know what caused this—it might have been her activity, it might have been the cinnabar root. The doctor did say there were some risks."
"Brother, are you saying it's my fault?" Ozai asked, not as if he were on the defensive but simply to get the record straight.
"I'm saying…sometimes things just happen. But if worse comes to worst, is that how you want to remember her? As a fool who caused her own death because she insisted on her freedom? Wouldn't you rather think she had simply been unlucky?"
"Unlucky," he repeated in a dead voice. "Maybe this is my fault. I was so insistent on having a lucky Solstice child…"
"Done is done," Iroh said philosophically. "You can't change anything by worrying about where to place the blame. I'm afraid there's nothing you can do about this, nothing at all, except wait and see. It's out of your hands."
"That's just it!" Ozai burst out, clawing at his own hair. "It can't be out of my hands! I'm the son of the Fire Lord, by Agni! How can I be powerless to save my own wife from herself?"
"It's a funny thing," Iroh reflected, "that the more power a man has over his countrymen, the less he has over those closest to him. A family can't be ruled by dominance and authority, brother, not if it's to be a family worth having. It must be ruled by love. Lu Ten obeys me not because I am the Heir Apparent or a famous war hero in command of a huge army, but because he loves me. And I am patient with him because I love him. It's something I wish our father understood a little better." He looked hard at his brother. "Do you love her, Ozai?"
"I…I don't know. I need her. I would do anything to keep her. But that's not the same thing, is it?"
"At least you're wise enough to know that. And honest enough to admit it. In any case, don't start mourning her yet. She's still with us, and I'm told the new midwife that was just brought in has far more experience than the first one. There's still a chance for this to end happily."
The hours dragged on without progress, until finally the second midwife made her report.
"Send for Her Highness's regular doctor at once. This is beyond me. The bleeding has finally subsided, but she's completely exhausted and so delirious from pain that she doesn't remember what's going on. Even if I could get the baby turned the right way around, she could never push it out. The only way now is to cut it out, and I'm not trained as a surgeon."
Dr. Chung was not pleased to be awakened in the middle of the night, and even less pleased to learn of the critical condition of his most prestigious patient. But he had his tools, and he had a capable assistant in the midwife, and as the clock turned to the wee hours of the morning, the funereal silence in the Palace was transformed into the lusty squalls of a newborn infant.
Dr. Chung exited the birthing room, drying his hands calmly. "My prince," he said to Ozai with a satisfied smile, "you have a healthy son."
Wild-eyed and grim-faced, Ozai nodded. "I have a son," he acknowledged weakly. "Do I still have a wife?"
"For the time being, at least," said Dr. Chung matter-of-factly. "I have her under sedation. She'll sleep for at least twenty-four hours, so you'll need the services of a wet nurse. The midwife says she can recommend a good one."
"May I go in and see her—them?" Ozai asked.
"Certainly, Your Highness. Just don't expect either of them to talk."
Ozai ignored the doctor's dry wit and hurried into the room, elbowing the other man aside in the process.
"Noblesse oblige isn't what it used to be, I see," Dr. Chung remarked to Iroh in a low voice.
"He's had a rough day."
"Mm. Why don't you come in and see the baby as well? He'll need someone sane to look up to until his mother gets better."
"Good idea," Iroh said, noting the doctor's optimistic phrasing.
The birthing room was sized to be cozy while still allowing for several people to move about quickly if necessary. To one side, the midwife was sponge-bathing the new princeling on a table at elbow height, having already tied off his umbilical cord. Her voice was a constant susurration of gentle cooing noises as she attempted to calm the wailing child. In the grand tradition of newborns, he looked something like a large berry pudding with a thin thatch of damp, jet-black hair.
To the other side, Princess Ursa lay as pale and still as death on the birthing couch, one of her hands held too tightly for tenderness in both of Ozai's. Yet she was not dead; her chest rose and fell shallowly and very slowly, but evenly. A sheet covered the lower half of her body, preserving her modesty. Dr. Chung folded back the top edge of it in order to dab away the blood crusting around a neat row of sutures, the length of a man's hand, that marred the flesh of her abdomen. Then he felt her forehead and measured the pulse in her free wrist.
"Will she live?" asked Ozai.
"It's too early to tell for sure," said the doctor with an air of clinical detachment that was curiously comforting. "But I have good hope. She's stronger than she looks. I wouldn't even rule out her having more children, in time. She'll need to be moved to a clean bed as soon as possible, of course." The fabric of the birthing couch was soiled beyond saving with blood and other fluids, and the handgrips bore small scorch marks, showing where the princess's minimal talent for firebending had gotten away from her in her extremity. The air was tinged with the scent of blood and smoke and with the screams…of the living, of the just-born.
"Of course," Ozai was saying. "And the baby?"
"Not my specialty, my prince," said Dr. Chung with a nod toward the murmuring midwife, who had finished washing the infant and was wrapping him in a soft blanket.
"He's perfectly healthy," the woman said, "but he'll want feeding before long. My youngest brother's wife is in that business; shall I send for her, Your Highness?"
"Yes, yes, that will be fine," Ozai said somewhat dazedly. "He's awfully noisy, isn't he?"
"I daresay he's not very pleased with the circumstances of his birth," the midwife guessed.
"That makes two of us," Ozai muttered under his breath. He still hadn't stopped gripping his wife's hand, or more than glanced at his son.
"May I hold the baby?" asked Iroh, partly because someone had to take him off the midwife's hands so she could send word to her sister-in-law the wet nurse, but mostly because he really wanted to.
"Of course, Your Highness. Just remember to support his head, and don't squeeze him or jostle him too sharply." And just like that, Iroh found himself in possession of his tiny, fussy, fragile-seeming nephew. It was all he could do not to dissolve into a puddle of sentimentality.
"Well, hello there, little one! Aren't you just the cutest? Do you know who I am? I'm your Uncle Iroh. What's your name?" He stopped and mentally berated himself for his idiocy. "Ozai, what is his name? Stop neglecting your paternal duties and come over here and meet your son. For better or worse, her condition doesn't hinge on whether or not you're holding her hand."
With great reluctance, Ozai released Ursa's hand and crossed the room (much to the relief of Dr. Chung, who was having to work around the brooding prince). He stared at the babe in his brother's arms in silence, indecipherable emotions clouding his features. After a long moment, he offered the child his index finger; the boy grasped it in his own miniature fingers and, quieting down at last, tried to suck on it.
"See?" said Iroh. "He likes you already."
"Zuko," said Ozai in a tone just above a whisper. "His name is Zuko."
"Zuko, eh? I like it. I think it'll suit him."
"I should take him," said Ozai, the vigor gradually returning to his voice. "It will be dawn soon; I shouldn't make him wait for his first sunlight."
"You do that," said Iroh, handing the baby—Zuko—over to Ozai. "Careful of his head. I'll help Dr. Chung oversee moving Ursa to her room. And then I'll go wake Lu Ten and tell him about his new cousin."
They knew Ursa would live when, after a full day and night and half of another day, she opened her eyes and immediately asked, in a weak but clear and steady voice, "Where is my baby?"
Ozai was dozing in the solarium when the message-bearer found him. He ran at speed all the way to his wife's bedchamber, where he found her weeping with joy and pressing Zuko to her breast with her returning strength. The smiling wet nurse bowed briefly to him and exited without a word, in the knowledge that her job, until further notice, was done.
"He's beautiful," sobbed Ursa. "Ozai…my lord husband, we have a beautiful son. I'm so happy…I never knew I could be this happy. Have you named him?"
"Zuko," Ozai said distractedly.
"Zuko," she repeated, clasping the baby even harder. "Zuko. My little Zuko. I love you, my son."
"Be careful, Ursa," said Ozai. "You're still very weak. You nearly died, you know."
"Did I? I hardly remember. It doesn't matter now anyway. Our son, our Zuko, is here and he's perfect. Surely this much joy is stronger than even death."
"You impress me, my wife. After he hurt you so grievously, you don't…resent him? At all?"
Ursa's jubilant face fell into an expression of total earnestness. "Why, no, my lord husband. I could never resent my firstborn child. The high price I paid to have him only makes him all the more precious to me. Please tell me you don't hold any grudge against him for what he could not help and will not remember."
"Of course not," Ozai said too hastily. "I only thought that maybe…" He trailed off.
"All the same, I am sorry, my lord husband," Ursa went on.
"You? What in Agni's name do you have to be sorry for?"
"The wet nurse told me…it was past midnight when Dr. Chung got him out. All that effort and pain and worry, and he missed being born on the Solstice by a few hours. I know how badly you wanted him born lucky."
"Never mind," said Ozai, sitting on the edge of the bed and caressing his wife's cheek with the back of his hand. "I can't be picky about the outcome of something that was beyond my control. With all that went wrong, I'd say that little Zuko was lucky to be born at all."
END