Chapter 5: The Return of Tau
The chamber was quiet again.
The doors had long since closed behind Crown Prince Zuko, their echo swallowed by the ancient stone walls. The scent of grilled meat and firefruit still lingered, untouched, though the flames at the center of the room burned with the same intensity as ever.
Ozai didn't move from his place at the end of the long stone table. His hands were folded behind his back once more, his gaze fixed on the smoldering firepit, where the embers pulsed like the last heartbeat of some dying beast.
Admiral Kuvak stood motionless a few paces away, still as iron, posture crisp, chin high. He didn't dare speak until Ozai did.
"You saw how he reacted," Ozai said at last, his tone mild, but carrying iron beneath the surface.
Kuvak nodded once. "Exactly as expected, my lord."
Ozai turned slowly, his golden eyes narrowing. "Emotionally compromised. Easily provoked. He has ambition, yes. But it burns without discipline."
Kuvak allowed himself a small nod. "He is dangerous. But not yet in the right way."
The Fire Lord stepped forward, the long red folds of his robes whispering across the polished obsidian floor. "He plays the part well. The righteous prince. The loyal heir. But underneath it, he thinks he's clever."
"He's certainly calculated," Kuvak replied. "The way he removed Zhao, humiliated the princess, consolidated influence in the war council... that wasn't luck."
"No," Ozai agreed. "It was ambition. Raw and untempered. That's the fire in him. Not the kind that warms, only the kind that consumes."
Kuvak folded his hands behind his back. "And that is why you brought me in."
Ozai walked slowly to the side of the room, where a great tapestry of the Fire Nation's conquests loomed, flames engulfing the continents, the phoenix crest rising above all.
"Yes," he said. "Zuko does not trust you. He never will. But that is irrelevant. Your presence is the leash. He will know you are watching, and that will curb his behavior more than any threat I could make."
Kuvak allowed himself the faintest smirk. "You want me to be the ghost on his shoulder."
Ozai turned to face him fully. "Exactly. When he falters, you will catch it. When he moves too quickly, you will slow him. When he speaks to allies, you will be the silence that makes them second-guess. Your very existence will limit him."
"And if he turns on me?"
Kuvak's eyes gleamed. "Then we will know exactly how far he's willing to go."
Kuvak inclined his head again. "Understood."
Ozai moved to the table again, picking up a thin scroll sealed in deep red wax. He held it up but did not extend it yet.
"Your orders are detailed. Your authority absolute when it comes to naval logistics. But you will not challenge him publicly unless I say so. Let him believe he commands. Let him taste leadership. Just enough to want more. Just enough to forget it's borrowed."
Kuvak stepped forward, his expression composed. "I'll shadow his orders. Guide the fleet where needed. Subtly. Quietly. He'll feel like the Fire Lord long before he becomes one."
"And that," Ozai said, handing over the scroll, "is the trap."
Kuvak accepted the scroll with both hands and gave a short, crisp bow. "It will be done, my lord."
There was silence for a moment, broken only by the crackle of flame.
Then Ozai added, almost as an afterthought, "Keep your eyes on the girl as well. Azula."
Genzo raised an eyebrow. "She'll be part of the expedition?"
Ozai's mouth tightened. "She asked for redemption. Zuko offered her a path to it. I allowed it. She is too valuable to discard, but too volatile to trust."
"And you believe she might align with him?"
"I believe she might align with power," Ozai answered. "That has always been her flaw. She doesn't serve anyone, not even me. Only victory."
Kuvak absorbed this quietly. "Two dragons on the same ship."
Ozai looked down into the fire. "If they burn each other, so be it. The ashes will tell me who was stronger."
Silence again.
Then, finally, Ozai turned away. "You leave in a few days. Dismissed."
Kuvak bowed once more and strode toward the doors.
As the heavy wood shut behind him, Ozai remained alone in the war chamber, staring down at the fire.
It twisted and coiled like a living thing. Unpredictable. Wild.
Just like his son.
Admiral Kuvak walked the length of the colonnade outside the war chamber, boots clicking rhythmically on the polished stone. The late afternoon sun cast molten lines through the high windows, lighting his path in fiery gold.
His expression remained composed, the unreadable mask of a man carved from command and training, but inside, his mind was moving like a siege engine.
Zuko.
The name lingered like a taste in his mouth, something bitter and unexpected. He had watched the Crown Prince for years from the periphery of naval intelligence. Initially, Zuko had been a boy to ignore, banished, broken, a disgrace carried only by name. But that was no longer the case. The boy who once cried in courtrooms and scorned tactics now held the fire of inheritance behind his eyes. And what disturbed Kuvak more than anything was that, unlike Azula, Zuko had learned how to *hide* it.
That made him dangerous.
More dangerous than Ozai had anticipated.
He remembered Ozai's tone back in the chamber. The calculated detachment. The warning he hadn't spoken aloud. Even Ozai, master of cruelty and control, saw it: Zuko was no longer simply a pawn. He was a player now. Ambitious. Clever. And if not properly checked, perhaps even… capable.
Kuvak reached the outer stairwell and began descending toward the barracks. The red banners fluttered on the breeze above, flapping like wings of some slumbering phoenix overhead.
He mulled over Zuko's record. The Avatar's capture. The engineered downfall of Commander Zhao. The calculated way he maneuvered Azula out of the line of succession and then subtly extended a hand to pull her back into play, on 'his' terms.
It was all too neat. Too elegant.
Too... orchestrated.
The prince had orchestrated his own redemption arc with the grace of a playwright.
And Kuvak didn't trust that one bit.
"You're not your father's son," he muttered under his breath. "You're something else entirely."
He admired cunning. He had built his career on it. But there was a difference between cunning in service to the throne, and cunning in pursuit of something else.
That "something else" was what worried him.
Kuvak turned into a private corridor and entered the lower command office assigned to him. The room was already being stocked by naval aides, its scroll shelves lined with sealed intelligence documents, maps of the northern seas, fleet rosters, and provisional supply chain charts.
The admiral waved the aides away with a curt nod. Once alone, he unrolled a parchment from his belt, handwritten in his own cipher, the loops and spikes of it indecipherable to any untrained reader.
The names on it weren't famous. Not yet.
They were officers, quartermasters, engineers, men and women personally loyal to 'him', not the prince, not the crown.
Loyal to discipline.
To surveillance.
To 'order'.
Captain Tehan, currently stationed aboard the Ember Fang, promotion pending.
Lieutenant Saya, embedded within the fleet's quartermaster corps, efficient, invisible, and lethal if needed.
Communications Officer Daku, mild, forgettable, but with the best memory of anyone Kuvak had ever met.
All of them had been carefully cultivated over the past few years. And now they would serve as his eyes and ears aboard the ships Prince Zuko would command. Not just to monitor for treason, but to 'learn' the prince.
His tendencies. His shifts in tone. The people he trusted. The things he avoided.
Kuvak didn't believe in immediate confrontation. He believed in data. In shadows. In watching long enough that, by the time you 'did' strike, you didn't miss.
He would create a latticework of loyal officers across every ship. A net of awareness so complete that Zuko would not take a breath without a whisper of it reaching Kuvak's ears.
There were risks, of course. Zuko wasn't a fool, and Azula was even less so. But they were young. Still emotional. Still carrying ghosts and wounds they thought they could hide behind strategy and fire.
But fire only burns. It does not 'watch'.
Kuvak, on the other hand, watched everything.
He moved to the eastern wall of the chamber, where the tall naval charts of the Southern Sea and the Northern Ice Break formed a massive mural across the wall. His fingers traced the outer edge of the projection.
Zuko would go north. That much was clear.
To the water tribes. To the places beyond the map's edges.
And Kuvak would be there. Behind him. Beside him. Always just a few steps back, never in the way, but always close enough to hear the next misstep. To record it. To understand it.
Because Ozai hadn't said it aloud, but Kuvak had read it in his eyes.
If the prince could not be controlled…
He would have to be replaced.
***
The capital slept under the pale weight of a cloud-choked moon. Firelight flickered only at the tops of towers and the gates of noble compounds. The alleys, backstreets, and gutters below were dark, wet, and silent.
A lone figure moved through the heart of it, cloaked and hooded, his footfalls silent despite the wet cobblestones. He passed under rusted eaves and broken awnings, weaving through crumbling lanes and half-collapsed plazas that the city had long forgotten.
Twice he paused, once when a patrol passed near the edge of the industrial quarter, and again when a rat the size of a badgercat bolted from a mound of refuse and nearly tripped him. He breathed heavily, but pressed on, the alleyways closing around him like stone arteries guiding blood to a dying heart.
Eventually, he reached a building, if one could still call it that.
It leaned at an unnatural angle, three of its corners seemingly held up by hope alone, the fourth already consumed by rot. Its wooden siding was warped with water damage, streaked black with soot and mildew. The front door, unmarked and sagging on rust-eaten hinges, looked like it would scream rather than creak.
He stepped forward and pushed it open.
It screamed.
The stench hit him immediately, mold, old blood, something acrid and chemical, and beneath it all the foul sourness of death. Not fresh, but settled. As if the building had absorbed suffering into its very bones.
He lowered his hood slightly, breathing through his mouth as he stepped into the rotting interior. The floorboards bowed beneath him. The walls were blistered with old, flaking paint. A single candle guttered in a rusted sconce, barely holding the darkness at bay.
Then…
"You are late," a voice said from the shadows.
Deep. Measured. Devoid of warmth.
The hooded figure turned toward it, eyes narrowing beneath the folds of his cowl. In the gloom, figures emerged, half a dozen of them, cloaked in dark robes and heavy hoods. None stepped forward, yet their presence filled the room like a breath before a scream.
"I was about to head south when I got your message," the man said, his voice tight with restraint.
"You were never released from your duty," another voice replied, feminine and sharp as a knife drawn in the dark. "Did you think the death of your commander removed you from the Order?"
The man shifted slightly, hands still hidden beneath his cloak. "After the last conversation with the Master… Zhao and I assumed we had been cut off. No orders. No contact. He thought we were being… discarded."
One of the robed figures stepped forward, gloved hand outstretched. "Remove your hood, Tau."
The man hesitated.
Then, slowly, he pulled the cowl back.
The firelight revealed the face of the disgraced lieutenant, Tau. His face was leaner now, scarred just above his cheek from a wound he hadn't had when he'd last worn his uniform. His eyes, once sharp with military pride, were sunken, rimmed with sleepless tension and faint desperation.
"The Master told you both to wait," said a third voice, older, smoother, yet somehow more threatening for its calm. "Zhao lacked the patience to obey. That is why he is dead. You, however, survived. And now, your purpose is renewed."
Tau opened his mouth to respond, but a different voice interjected.
"Show yourselves."
As if summoned by that command, half a dozen new shapes emerged from the far corners of the ruined building.
Two were women, dressed in worn leathers beneath their cloaks. One of them, tall, tattooed, scarred across her nose, locked eyes with Tau and gave the faintest nod. The other's gaze was unreadable, eyes hidden behind a silk half-mask.
The other four were men. One was enormous, broad as an ox and shirtless beneath his robes, tattoos marking his arms with firebending sigils. Another was shorter, wiry, with twin dao blades strapped to his back. One held nothing at all, not visibly, but his hands twitched like he was remembering killing someone with them. The last was the smallest of the group, but moved with unsettling silence.
All six knelt before Tau.
His breath caught. "What is this?"
"They are yours," said the older voice. "Your cell. Your blade. Your shadow. Your shield."
Tau turned toward the first robed speaker, eyes flashing with wary suspicion. "Why me? Why now?"
Another hooded figure answered. "Because the war is entering its next act. And the prince is no longer a pawn. He is becoming a player."
Tau frowned. "Then why not strike at him directly?"
The silence that followed was thick and coiled.
"Because," came the final reply, "his flame is not yet meant to go out. But your role is to shape the pyre around him."
Tau clenched his fists. "What am I going to do?"
No answer came. Only silence.
Long. Cold. Final.
The candle trembled in its socket. The building groaned as if exhaling.
Tau looked again at the six kneeling before him.
And felt the breath of fate on his neck.
[A/N: Can't wait to see what happens next? Get exclusive early access on patreon.com/saiyanprincenovels. If you enjoyed this chapter and want to see more, don't forget to drop a power stone! Your support helps this story reach more readers!]