Chapter 54- And so the Dragons Danced

Food, drinks, and music. That was all that as necessary to have a good party in the fire nation. Things like entertainment tended to come out on their own once the party began to get going. That was the story for the party Toji held for Natsu’s victory in the Northern Water Tribe. He faked a letter from messenger hawk. Faked joy in the throne room where he’d briefly held court in a chair below the steps to the throne, like the High General was authorized to do in times of war. Old man Hiro hadn’t taken his demotion well, but he had the good fortune to avoid exile for his actions in bending the knee to Zuko the pretender and even drafting plans to help him put an end to the war. He was returned to his family’s lands with little fanfare and warned never to step foot in the capital for the rest of his natural life on pain of death.

He’d faked everything necessary and then announced a party across the entire palace to celebrate the end of the war. The Capital-wide party would coincide with Natsu’s return and coronation to save costs as much as possible, as well as ensure that people learned to associate the end of the war and the almost-punishing taxes that had marked that era with the beginning of Natsu’s reign. Natsu, the first of his name, Greatest Fire Lord ever, had a ring to it that brought a smile to Toji’s face even as he watched one of the imperial guard lead Mako about the place.

His job was simple: identify the man who had hired his friend to kill Natsu, and that would give them their first lead into getting to the bottom of the mess they found themselves in.

“Hello, Father. Flame-o hotman” he said, stepping towards the man who had been making a beeline to him, almost on the verge of seeming rude with how he ignored all those who tried to gather his attention in favour of coming straight at Toji.

“Cease this pointless resistance” his father whispered harshly.

“I have no idea of what you speak.”

“Chinatsu says you have turned her away three times in as many days. High General or not, you still have to do your duty to our family, or there is nothing we could gain from this situation” He said, not even bothering to beat around the bush, instead jumping in machete in hand and cutting through anything that got in his way.

“And I told you I had no interest before you even set this silly thing in motion.”

“I care little for that. Her family has the one thing we need, legitimacy. The nobles scoff at me behind my back and whisper about us. We’ve risen far, and we have even farther to go. That’s where you come in Toji. For good or for ill, you have managed to worm your way into the Fire Lord’s confidence, and you will lift our boats with your tide” Toji felt his jaw clench.

“Or else what?”

“Silly boy. I have no need to threaten you. It’s what your mother would want” He said, leaving Toji frozen in his wake as he turned to leave. His mother? That bastard had the audacity to mention his mother in this? The woman that he had killed in his search for the perfect firebending heir. All his brothers might be benders, but between the lot of them, they’d struggle to come up with enough power to light a row of candles on their best day. That bastard had forced her over and over again to give him children in the hopes she created something like the family she came from, and he had failed at every turn, now he dared to invoke her name to get Toji to bend to his will. Never. He’d never give him that satisfaction.

He scoffed and turned away before he felt his attention be called to the men at the corner of the boardroom. Mako, the prisoner, and Shi, the imperial guard, stood in the corner behind the table that served drinks of all types preserved at different temperatures to make sure they suited all pallets. While firebenders tended to prefer their drinks as boiling hot as the flames they commanded, while non benders like Toji tended to prefer things at the optimal temperatures to both maximize taste and longevity for the drinks. It would be a faux pas for Toji to not ensure that the drinks at an event like this one were up to far Anything less, and he risked inviting dishonor not just upon himself and his family, but Natsu as well, and even the War effort as a whole with his position as Acting High General to consider.

He walked towards them, making sure to do it the proper way. Everything had a proper way, and so he walked like he had been taught to do so at a party like this one. He went to the left first, moving in a circle that led him to his destination. Nobility did not walk in straight lines— to do so would be to imply being in a rush, and they were nobility. They did not rush. That was the purview of servants, peasants, and paupers, not men and women of the leisure class. He walked to the left because only the FireLord had the authority to walk to the right. Everyone else had to walk as if going left until they looped around the room to their destination. As he walked, he made sure to greet and be greeted by everyone of a rank to be able to speak directly to him at an event like this one.

Traditionally, he would have been doing a lot of bowing, but his recent promotion meant he was doing loads of nodding instead. As a Zenin, he was outranked by most of the lords here, but as the Acting High General, he was subordinate only to the Fire Lord and the Grand Vizier. Natsu was yet to appoint a Grand Vizier, and so that made him the top dog in this kennel, and he was enjoying the feeling. He allowed those who would have sneered and thumped their noses at him in any other situation to bow and kiss his ring for as long as he could before he permitted them to rise.

It took him half a candle’s turn to make his way around the room to where Shi and Mako stood, behind the drinks. Eyes follow him all the way so he hoped that they had something substantial for him as the reason for calling his attention because anything less would risk ruining the plan for no reason. “Talk to me”, he said as he got within range for them to hear me, but out of range from being heard by anyone else.

“We’ve found the person who hired the Prisoner, my Lord” Shi began. He nodded, pleased with that, and gestured for the man to keep speaking.

“Lord Matsuhito’s chief Aide was identified by the Prisoner as the one who spoke to him and his employer and secured their services for the planned assassination of the Fire Lord” Shi said, speaking on Mako’s behalf while the smaller injured man nodded along with his words. Toji looked over to the side, staring right at Lord Matsuhito’s position. The man was engaged in conversation with two others, but his aide was not. The old man looked over in their direction, and visibly paled at seeing their attention levied on him. He got even paler when Toji reached behind him and removed the hood of Mako’s cloak, baring his face to the room. The man began to stumble back, clearly about to begin running, and that was all the evidence Toji needed.

He ran forward before jumping right over the heads of the shocked crowd and landing in the middle of the room, only a few steps away from the Aide. The man was quick on his feet, but not quick enough. Toji could see him beginning to approach the door. He turned to his side and picked up a tray from the servant behind him. It had one glass still on it, so he emptied the glass of flaming wine down his throat, handed it back to the servant and then tossed the tray like a disc.

It sailed through the air and hit his target right on the back of his head as he had been about to cross the door. The heavy silver sent hum to the floor and the guards around moved in to secure him as the rest of the hall turned to Toji in shock. “Please carry on as you were. Just a small matter that needs tending,” He said with a smile as he walked after the guards taking the man to the dungeon.

“Shi, place the palace on lockdown. No one leaves or enters” He said as he passed the guard that had helped set this in motion.

—

“So I’ll give you one chance to provide the information I need before I begin to extract it from you in means that you will find most unpleasant” He said, taking out a set of tweezers made from wrought iron and a rusted hammer from his little bag of tools. Natsu didn’t have the best regard for more brutal means of information extraction, preferring his water trick, but Toji was a simple, traditional man, and he knew what would make a bird like this one sing.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Do you know who I am? I am the Senior Aide and Advisor to Lord—“

“I don’t care.” Toji said with a chuckle.

“You will tell me what I want to know before you suffer, or you will tell me after you suffer. Either way, I’m not leaving here without what I want” He said before snatching one of the man’s hands, holding it steady and then ripping the nail from his index finger with a single harsh movement.

The man’s screams were music to his ears.

“Now, first question. Who told you to hire assassins to go after the Fire Lord?” Toji, it turned out, did not need to bother preparing himself for a long session or even involving Toph. After the first fingernail was ripped off, the man sung like a canary. He never even attempted to lie and answered each question fully and completely.

At some point, he had needed to invite a scribe to take note of the vast amounts of information being dumped on his lap. When he was through, he stood up with a scowl. The plot was a far-reaching one. So far-reaching that it had involved virtually half the nobility, and that was the problem. Natsu’s rule was too fragile to just off half of court. But half of court has tried to kill the Fire Lord, and if he didn’t do something now, then there would be no telling how else they would strike out when they would do so.

“Convene the following Lords at the throne room to await my presence” He said, turning to the scribe before reading out the names of the guilty parties. Impressively enough, his father’s name had somehow managed to make it off the list. When he had asked the Aide, the man had said the others did not hold Lord Zenin in high enough regard to help them with their Regicide. The only thing that would save his father and blood family from sure ruin would end up being the fact that the others didn’t care enough about them to involve them in their ill-thought plan.

—

He walked into the throne room with head held high and Toph at his back. Zhufu would wait in her rooms for the time being, being in a state too fragile to risk with men that could turn hostile at any moment. Whispers quieted as he walked in. Several of these men had already tried to escape the Palace and been held against their will. Many more of them had sent aides to register their displeasure at being held. They thought they were being subtle, but their actions gave them away. The other lords, the ones with no guilt or involvement, were more interested in sticking around to figure out the gossip that was sure to follow from his arrest of Lord Matsuhito’s chief Aide. The man himself thought he was sly with his first requests for the release of his Aide, and then his later attempts to escape the palace once he realised the jig was up.

The throne room was a massive chamber. With the fire lord’s customary flames absent, it was lit from the outside with its curtains opened for perhaps the first time in decades. Toji sat at the chair that had been set aside for him and Toph stood right behind him, not tall enough that she was able to look over the chair, so she found herself moving to the side to get a good view of what was going on. She was his bodyguard incase this lot decided to try something insane.

“You attempted to kill the Fire Lord” He said, beginning things without attempting to bat about the bush. Most of them sputtered denials or tried to act shocked at his words, but these men were not good liars. They had earned their position by virtue of dropping out from between the right set of legs. This was far from the Fire Nation court of old, where the Lords were political animals bred for the battlefield that was the Royal Court. Since Sozin began his war, it became far less fashionable to idle about in the court.

The parties stopped happening, the wine stopped flowing, and being seen sitting idle led to questions about why you weren’t on the front lines bringing glory and honour to the Fire Nation, so the Royal Court became dryer and dryer. That change meant these men were not the political monsters their ancestors were, and it showed. Their ancestors would never have tried something so clumsy to achieve the goals they sought.

“Stop the denials. I have already interrogated Lord Matsuhito’s aide, and he has confessed the full scope of your plans to me.” He said, tired of the whinging.

“But High General, surely you will not trust the word of a mere aide over respectable Lords like ourselves.” One of the Lords, Kaizen, spoke on behalf of the lot, receiving nods from the rest of them.

“Of course. That would be ridiculous. Instead, I have my guards searching each of your rooms now in search of supporting evidence— things like promissory notes for gold, letters containing sensitive communication detailing notes of the plot, the likes, you know” He said, with a smile. Unsaid was the fact that even if the evidence did not exist, his people would plant the evidence there. Each of them knew it already though, it was what they would do in his stead, and he watched Kaizen take a deep breath, deciding his course of action.

“The entire plot, if there was a plot at all, must have been Lord Matsuhito’s idea. If any blame is to be apportioned, then it should be on his head.” They didn’t last long before throwing stones at each other. He watched some of them instantly begin agreeing, adding their voices to Kaizen’s. Matsuhito, on the other hand, looked a step away from an explosion.

“Enough” Toji said, putting an end to their squabbling and muttering. They were silly creatures to begin with, and this displays hd done nothing for his regard of them. Left to his devices, he would have killed them all and left chaos in this wake, but that was no ay to secure Natsu’s rule. The Fire Nation did not consist only of the Fire Nation anymore, and that meant that Natsu could not afford to be dealing with the chaos these nobles would cause with their absence. Even Toji would admit that they were useful tools for administering the ethnically diverse region, and that usefulness would be key in the society that was to become.

“The truth is, we have known of your plans for a while now. The Fire Lord patiently waited for you to duo something irredeemable and inexcusable. By murdering his grandfather in your reckless and careless attempt to eliminate him, you have crossed a line that is simply unforgivable, and the punishment must match that” He said, pressing upon them with the seriousness of their offense. If there was one thing Natsu’s ridiculous Agni kais had accomplished, it was that they had sold the fact that he was the scariest motherfucker out there and sold it well. No one had any doubts that he was the strongest firebender anymore, as he coldly and calmly cut apart candidate after candidate. Toji had the joy of a front-row seat to the dread that had built on their faces— even if he had failed to correctly identify the root cause. If he had known then, he would have taken his spear to them and damned the consequences. But in a world without old man Wu, the consequences would be theirs to deal with.

“What do you want?” Matsuhito asked through gritted teeth.

“Five heads must roll. Pick the five most active of your number and volunteer them for execution. Beyond that, each of you will send for your heirs in body and title, and until they arrive you will not be allowed to leave the palace. They will remain here as a guarantee of your future behaviors. And for the next ten years, the wartime taxes you paid earlier will be doubled, even while the other lords will see theirs halved.”

“That would ruin us” Kaizen cried.

“Then so be it” he judged

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