Zuko watched the girl carefully as she entered the alley. She didn’t look like much – certainly not like someone who should be following strangers down dark passages. He couldn’t recall her face from around the tea shop, or around his part of the neighborhood. Then again, there were so many people choked up around here, it was easy to overlook a few hundred or so faces.
He shoved up from the wall, and opened his mouth to demand why she was trailing him. But his words abruptly died when she lit the candle with her fingers. She was a firebender? He took a step back from her and looked out into the street, then behind him and even up at the roofs of the buildings on either side of them. It wasn’t so much that he was afraid of the law enforcement – he was confident he could hold his own against them – but he couldn’t afford the trouble.
The Dai Li took Jet, probably questioned him. If they took even a fraction of what he accused them of seriously, he and his uncle could be under suspicion. They had been so careful. He didn’t even meditate with candles, in the privacy of their apartment. All it would take is one pair of sharp eyes to notice the flames moving with his breath… And here this girl just lights a candle, with a busy street right behind her!
But again, his words were lost as she said his name. His real name, that no one in this city was supposed to know. “My name is Lee,” he ground out. “And I don’t know you.”