They just stood.
Now Kano worked as a stonemason by day and kept a low profile by night. He never firebent in public. Not even to light a candle.
She hadn’t answered. She never did.
Lian spun. A girl stood ten feet away, arms crossed. She had sharp features and wore the yellow-green of the local militia—the Ba Sing Se Home Guard. But her eyes were amber, not brown. And her stance was too relaxed for an Earth soldier.
“That won’t work,” said a voice.
In Ba Sing Se, the war was over, but the peace was a thin glaze over cracked stone. The Fire Nation had occupied the city for three years before the Avatar returned. Now, Fire Nation troops were gone, but their half-children remained—scattered across the Lower Ring like unwanted seeds. Lian was one of them. Her mother, a potter from the Agrarian Zone, had fallen in love with a Fire Nation engineer named Kano. He had helped rebuild the outer walls after the siege. When the war ended, he stayed. That choice made him a traitor to some and a ghost to most.
The speaker pointed. “What is that?”
But Lian had heard that talk before. It started with words, then became looks, then broken pottery, then a brick through a window.