Chapter Text
he tried ignoring the sea
but it was bigger than death, just as it was bigger than life
Neuvillette was still reeling from the revelations Focalors gave him, before her death, when the battle with the Narwhal began in earnest. It was greatly weakened, even in comparison to what it had just been like, when it rampaged the Opera. Soon enough, the Narwhal collapsed into a pulse of dark, slowly descending upon a stranger’s hand.
“Wait!”
His voice echoed in a viscerally unfamiliar way. He’d always carried himself with decorum and the authority invested upon him by… by his station. It came from the Archon, technically, but it had been so carefully circumvented so it wouldn’t chafe, and he always said he did his best to serve the people, rather than the farse that was a usurper’s rule. But now the farse was done and his Authority rushed through his veins, clogging every pore and adding weight to every word that escaped his mouth, regardless of whether he meant to or not.
The woman paused, in recognition to that unintended heft in his voice, her fingers clutching the loose collar on Tartaglia’s shirt. Her eyes ran through him and the Traveler, assessing and dismissing all at once, and he would have something to say about that, but she suddenly threw Tartaglia right at him, his body worryingly boneless as Neuvillette caught him on reflex. Then she threw the orb containing the Narwhal into the rift and dusted off her hands with a disinterested air.
“Nicely done there, with the clean-up job,” the stranger said, watching dispassionately as Neuvillette figured out the correct way to hold onto a body that seemed… unnaturally insubstantial at the moment. “Should have been my job, but… oh well!” She offered a small shrug. “It was just supposed to be a short private training session for me… I didn’t think my disciple and my master’s pet would start brawling in the meantime!” She watched in amusement as Tartaglia’s unconscious frame refused to let itself be carried sensibly, despite Neuvillette’s best attempts. “Well, actually, I had a feeling that would happen at some point, but they bumped not one another earlier than I’d thought. What a blunder.” She shook her head as Neuvillette found something like balance, Tartaglia’s knees hooked on one arm, and the other clutching at the frail shoulders that seemed to swim inside his jacket, like it was two or three sizes too big for him. “I suppose I’ll have to swing my sword three million times as penance.”
“Disciple?” The Traveler asked, stealing a glance as the unconscious youth in Neuvillette’s arms.
“Your master’s pet?” Neuvillette said, instead, refusing to look too closely at Tartaglia’s ghost of a breath. “That power you wield… who are you, exactly?”
The stranger smiled at him, and the smile only widened, as the Traveler’s floating companion stepped up to offer a guess. In the following, harrowing conversation, Tartaglia’s breathing was a quiet, weak whisper against his throat, a peculiar anchor against the outrageous words he was pelted with, that threatened his budding understanding of the world and his role in it.
“If you’re interested, though, I can ask him,” the woman, Skirk, said with yet another shrug. “I’ll be sure to pass the answer on to you next time.”
“Next time?” Neuvillette frowned warily. “You believe we will meet again?”
“I do!” She laughed. “Wait, I have a disciple of my own, don’t I?” Something in the way she looked at Tartaglia’s barely responsive frame set Neuvillette’s teeth on edge. “He can be my messenger, then!”
She vanished through the rift, walking confidently and without fear as she disappeared into the dark beyond the Primordial Sea. Neuvillette lingered there a moment longer, collecting himself, before he returned to the chaos that was Fontaine, post-flood.
He returned to the Opera through the portal left behind, only to find the entire nation underwater, yes, but not a single drop beyond the borders he’d drawn when he’d first made use of the Authority that now resided within him.
Below, the Duke’s vessel spearheaded the rescue efforts, surrounded by a fleet of much smaller boats that reached out for those left adrift in the waters of judgment. The Primordial Sea was at peace once more, he could feel it, in the tip of his ears and the root of his teeth, and he was struck again by the sensation that his body was wrong for the senses he now had, and they had to adapt to a subpar vessel. In his arms, Tartaglia remained quiet and unmoving, breath steady but slow. Weak.
Neuvillette willed the waters to recede, as he would will his hand to move, and the response was so abrupt he nearly regretted it. As if the earth was a sieve, the water fled back to the depths, undisturbed and unperturbed by the fundamental change in the order of the world. Water, after all, was always water.
He found Furina sobbing in relief, hidden behind a column while the survivors fled towards the aquabus station, desperate to head back to the Court and make sure their loved ones were safe.
“Is it over?” She asked, looking up at him in such a raw, vulnerable tone, that his knees almost couldn’t take it. “Am I done?”
“Yes,” Neuvillette said, and wished he could reach out to hold her hands as she pressed them into her face and laughed a miserable, exhausted sob. “You did wonderfully, Lady Furina.”
After a moment, Furina composed herself, wiping away her tears with her gloves before taking them off and rubbing the bridge of her nose and the corner of her eyes with her fingers. Only then did she notice the figure hanging limply from Neuvillette’s arms.
“Is he… dead?” She asked, slowly unfurling back to her feet to take a better look of the, admittedly, corpselike countenance of the Harbinger.
“No,” Neuvillette said, assaulted by the thought that it would be a grave injustice if such was the case, and hoping, deep down, that verbalizing so would carry some of that same weight that coaxed the world to bend to his will now. “I believe he’s mostly exhausted.”
“I can sympathize,” Furina said, and allowed herself a slightly shrill laugh. “Oh. Oh, I’m done.”
“Yes,” Neuvillette assured her. “You fulfilled your task as Hydro Archon and saved Fontaine from the prophecy of annihilation.”
Furina gave him a long, lost look and then stared at Tartaglia instead, with something like yearning on her face.
“I want a nap,” she said, her shoulders slumping by degrees. “I think… I think I should be allowed one. A long one, yes. Before we have to deal with… everything else.”
“I don’t see why not,” Neuvillette said gently, as gently and kindly as he could, for he feared Furina was currently the consistency of spun glass, and the wrong kind of pressure might shatter her irreparably.
“Great,” she said, nodding slowly, before she bent down to grab her hat. She dusted off the top, and very carefully plopped it back on her head. “Let’s go home, Neuvillette.”
Neuvillette smiled.
“Let’s.”
Of course, on the way back to the Palais, multitudes – plural – formed as they approached, a veritable sea of people, voices. They cheered, mostly. Some of them were angry. Some of them were afraid. Most of them were still wet. Neuvillette glided through the crowd as he headed back to the Palais, by sheer force of presence parting the flood of people clamoring for answers he wasn’t quite sure anyone could give. A few members of the Marechausse Phantom shuffled close until they were forming a barricade, divining without being told that Neuvillette was trying to protect Furina from her own people. It took some time and some doing, but soon they were home. Furina scurried away to her quarters without a second look, and Neuvillette gave the order that no one was to inconvenience the former Hydro Archon, without his permission. The least he could do was afford her to sleep for as long as she wished and rest after such a grueling task. There were many things left to discuss between them, but none of them seemed comparable with Furina’s well-earned rest.
“Monsieur Neuvillette,” Sedene said gently, standing before the door to his office. Neuvillette stopped, looking down at her expectantly. “Should you not send him home before you settle down to work?”
She nodded meaningfully at Tartaglia’s body, which remained limp and unresponsive in his arms. Neuvillette admitted she was speaking sense: there was nowhere to place Tartaglia, in his office: after such an illustrious service to Fontaine, the least he could was let him rest somewhere that wasn’t the purposefully uncomfortable couches in his office. Tartaglia wasn’t a petulant noble trying to pry some favor by talking endlessly at him, endeavoring to eat up his schedule with pointless vapidness.
Did Tartaglia have a home in Fontaine, however? The room he’d been renting when he’d first arrived had been emptied out when he’d been sent to Meropide. And though there was Fatui presence in Fontaine – indeed, the Knave was someone he’d need to speak with, sooner rather than later – he knew well their organization was not necessarily safe for a wounded agent, more so one as politically significant as a Harbinger. If Tartaglia’s own men were present in Fontaine, that would be one thing, but as far as Neuvillette was aware, every remaining Fatui in Fontaine reported to the Knave.
And the Knave was… well. Complicated.
Tartaglia had suffered many great injustices, during his time in Fontaine, conviction for a crime he couldn’t have possibly have committed not the least among them, and yet in the end, when it mattered, he’d protected the people at great cost to himself. There was much Neuvillette didn’t understand of the Harbinger’s presence in Fontaine and his role in the grand finale of Focalors’ farce, and until that was cleared out, it felt… unreasonable, to put Tartaglia’s life at risk.
He could always be killed later, if it turned out he deserved it, Neuvillette told himself, as he made up his mind, but once dead it would be impossible to commute his sentence.
“He will remain under my protection for the time being,” Neuvillette said, “but you’re correct, my office is no place for him. While I’m settling him in my quarters, please send word for Sigewinne, Sedene. If she can spare the time to look at him, I would like to have the input from a trusted doctor.”
“I see,” Sedene said, after a moment, staring at Tartaglia for a long moment, before she nodded solemnly. “I’ll take care of it, Monsieur, do not worry.”
Reassured that they were both on the same page, Neuvillette retreated to his quarters, where the only bed available was, of course, his own. Tartaglia nearly vanished into the covers, the soft mattress near swallowing him whole as soon as Neuvillette deposited him there. He remained loose-limbed and limp, like someone had replaced every bone with squishy cartilage and all his muscles with whipped cream. But his breathing remained steady and unhurried. At least, Neuvillette reckoned, he did not look to be in any pain.
With one last look – focused on his chest, making sure it moved, just once more, just to be sure – Neuvillette walked down back to his office, and dove into the task of whatever came after, once the end of the world was through.
“May I study him?” Sigewinne asked, sometime in the dead of night – two in the morning, according to the clock in his desk, halfway buried in papers and folders and dire requests. “He should be dying, but he’s not. It’s very interesting.”
“Who?” Neuvillette asked before he could think better of it.
“Tartaglia,” Sigewinne said, coming around to serve him a milkshake – greenish mauve, this time – which he took because he knew better than to argue.
It had been hours, possibly days, now, and though his body seemed to be fueled by something far more intangible than food now, he was still, for the most part, human-shaped. It cost him nothing to indulge Sigewinne’s kindness, after all.
Then her words sank in.
“What do you mean he’s dying but not?” Neuvillette asked, as quietly and not upset as he could make himself sound, because Sigewinne preferred all matters of medicine to be treated sensibly, rather than emotionally.
“No, no, he should be dying,” Sigewinne said, shaking her head. “But he is not. Most of his bones have been broken at least once, if not more. Several of his organs are… liquified. Strictly speaking, his physical condition is not conducive to life.” She paused, and smiled, intrigued. “And yet, he remains.”
“Can you help him?” Neuvillette asked, as he tried to wrap himself around the notion of an undying dead man sleeping soundly in his bed.
“I don’t know,” Sigewinne replied, shrugging. “I can make notes and… study. Trial and error. He keeps getting better, but he’s also… well, there’s a lot he has to heal. Are you certain he’s human?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Neuvillette confessed with a sigh. “I expect the Fatui will ask to claim him soon.”
“Hmm,” Sigewinne hummed, pensive. “If he dies under their care, we’ll never know if he just failed to heal or if he was tampered with.”
It’d be a diplomatic incident, though, if the Knave asked and he refused. Did he have ground to refuse? At least, grounds that didn’t boil down to admitting he did not trust the steadfast allies that had helped save his nation? It was a conundrum.
On the other hand, there was the gnosis.
“Yes,” Neuvillette said, after a moment, taking a moment to close his eyes and rest his sight before he started on another pile of urgent requests.
“Monsieur?”
“You may study him,” Neuvillette said, offering her a wry smile as she lit up like a child being given a spectacular birthday present. “And perhaps, if possible, assist with his healing.”
“I will do my best,” Sigewinne said solemnly, bowing her head before she left, skipping every step.
The Knave came and went: brisk, efficient and utterly uncaring of Fontaine’s future, Neuvillette’s new status or Tartaglia’s convalescence, now that her mission had been completed successfully.
She asked once, and Neuvillette rebuked her lightly, expecting he’d need to provide explanations or some kind of justification for his decision to keep Tartaglia right here he was: safe and under Sigewinne’s ever bewildered care. She did not prompt him to. She moved onto the next item in her agenda – the release of Fatui resources currently supplementing Fontaine’s own, supporting the recovery efforts, as soon as possible. She argued for that a lot more intently, than she did for Tartaglia’s custody, and something about it sat bitter and unkind in the back of Neuvillette’s throat, unable to be removed, no matter how much water he drank.
Soon enough the Knave was gone, all matters squared away, the Hydro gnosis in her care, and a terse promise to return only to reclaim her people and vacate Fontaine of Fatui, at long last.
Before the day was done, the Traveler was there, questions and more questions, and the perennial mystery of their entire being – descender – as well as their never ending journey across the land. Neuvillette found that he liked the Traveler, and it was such an obvious, self-evident thing that he almost didn’t realize it before they left. The way they smiled, as he made this truth known to them, he got the impression they were aware of it, perhaps long before he was. But there was a certain camaraderie there, something not quite like kinship, born of the ordeal and the truths they had shared.
It was nice.
The Traveler announced their next destination would be Natlan, and left behind Tartaglia’s vision, which he had given them to safeguard at some point. Neuvillette saw them off, swore most ardently they would always find a willing ally in him, and took extreme care to not crush the abomination they left in his care. With his Authority restored, he could sense the portion of the Hydro Archon’s power that had been granted to Tartaglia, but there was something… off about it. It felt corroded. Entire chunks gouged out, like rot had been cut out and the edges cauterized with red hot iron, the way humans used to, before they learned better ways to not kill themselves.
It was worrisome, more so when, after taking it back to him, Sigewinne reported that all progress had slowed to a crawl, but attempting to remove the vision from the room caused Tartaglia’s vitals to crater horrifically, so now she was stuck watching him heal at a rate that was decidedly inhuman, given how slow it was and how very dead he should be, if Sigewinne’s assessment of his insides was in any way accurate.
“Still alive?” Furina asked, standing by the doorway, not quite inside the room.
Her quarters were really the same as his own, shared living spaces that nonetheless he’d ceded to her for lack of a use for them. But she’d never come into his personal room, before. He’d never seen the inside of hers, either. Five hundred years, they’d known each other, lived together, shared power together. He’d never once doubted her rank or her intentions. She had invited him to Fontaine, to witness the spectacle of her Oratrice, and the kind of Justice she wished to embody.
Her predecessor had been a counterbalance. An enslaved usurper, to be sure, but they were both creatures born of the same sea, deep in the bowels of the world, and that made them kindred. They had both hated that, he thought. Egeria could have killed him at any time, trapped as he’d been in a human form, and instead she’d taught him how to access what little of his Authority and Identity remained, after incarnating in a human vessel. There had been… not peace, between him and Egeria, but rather an amicable sort of disdain. The kind of low simmer hatred that took eons to coalesce. But then Egeria was dead, and he was left missing the satisfying conclusion to their eternal feud.
By contrast Furina – not Focalors, Furina, and he made a note, to himself, to make sure Furina’s deeds and accolades were properly credited in the history of Fontaine, that her hard work and sacrifice would not be diluted by the triumph Focalors stole from the Heavenly Principles – had been… different. Young. Extravagant. Loud and unrepentant and yet somehow never obnoxious or annoying. Neuvillette was always rather contemptuous of those who took the Hydro Archon at face value, who wrote her off her kindness and sincere affection for her people simply because she wasn’t Egeria’s solemn dignity.
Furina, Neuvillette thought resolutely, was the better Archon, by a mile. He would know, he’d known all three.
“Still alive,” Neuvillette said, nodding and gesturing her to approach.
She seemed to realize, much like he just had, that she’d never ventured into his room before, because she paused for a moment, before stepping confidently across the threshold.
“He doesn’t look very scary,” she said, coming to sit next to Neuvillette, leaning over to study Tartaglia’s slack features. “Hard to imagine he’s a Harbinger.”
“Sigewinne is not quite sure what to make of him,” Neuvillette said, shaking his head. “Every day he gets a little better, according to her measurements, but despite that, he’s still firmly in should not be alive territory.”
“As far as the prophecy was concerned, no one should be alive, he’s just… being a lot more literal about it.” Furina scoffed a small laugh and looked at her shoes, her feet not quite touching the ground where she sat. “We should talk, shouldn’t we?”
She was so small, Neuvillette thought. So small and fragile and mortal. It sat wrong in his gut, and before he knew it, the raindrops began to pelt at the windows.
“Yes,” he said, looking at Tartaglia’s peaceful face, rather than Furina. “We should.”
Furina was not a god, after all. And Focalors had died so she could live. He had a message to impart and… questions, about how he should proceed. With Furina’s absence from the public eye, it seemed to him that the entire country had collectively assigned him to the post of Archon. Which he wasn’t and would never be. No one would. Ever. But beyond that… beyond that there were so many things he just wanted to say, openings he wished to make so she could tell him everything she thought and felt, like always.
“Hydro dragon, Hydro dragon,” Furina intoned, teasing, as the rain outside intensified.
“Do not,” Neuvillette said, hoarse, turning to look at her with an expression that made her flinch. “I apologize. Focalors… Her last words to me, I…”
“I’m sorry,” Furina said, standing up abruptly. “I shouldn’t… I’m sorry. I’ll ask Sedene for some time,” she said, in the tone she always used when she wouldn’t, actually, and that hurt worse, somehow.
“Lady Furina—”
“Goodness, look at the hour!” She offered a small, empty laugh. “I should sleep. As should you! We should take a page out of our guest’s book and take time to rest. Good night, Neuvillette.”
Neuvillette watched her walk mechanically out of the room, not quite scurrying away.
“Good night, Lady Furina.”
As expected, Sedene booked no appointments for her. Neuvillette tried and failed to not feel disappointed about it.
Day in, day out, Fontaine continued to exist regardless of the endless list of things his people insisted threatened to destroy them, and then one day, there was a girl standing before his desk and he realized a whole month had gone by, since the day Fontaine flooded, and then didn’t.
“You’re not the Marchioness of Chalusset,” Neuvillette said, quickly recognizing the way the girl carried herself, despite the fact she had scrupulously removed any and all visible signs of her association with Snezhnaya.
Neuvillette wondered absently if this was going to be his first assassination attempt, now that he was, in fact, nigh unkillable. There was no murderous intent coming out of her, though. There was nothing, in fact, coming out of her, to his senses. And that was eminently more interesting, considering how well-honed his empathy was.
“I am not, Your Worship,” the girl said, grey eyes staring daringly at him, unflinching. “You have something of mine. Someone.”
“Is that so?” Neuvillette asked.
“I… I left as soon as the news were announced,” the girl said. “Her Majesty has declared the Eleventh seat vacant, Your Worship. Tartaglia is, in essence, dead, as far as the rest of the Fatui are concerned.” She paused, trying to gauge his reaction to the news, and then continued. “But he’s not. He’s recovering, under your care.”
“Do you find that objectionable?” Neuvillette asked, trying to figure out what she was trying to do.
“I do not,” she said, “under your protection, he’s safe. But you do not have a reason to extend him that grace, Your Worship, more so when doing so inevitably brings about trouble for Fontaine.” Before Neuvillette could challenge such an assertion, the girl folded down to one knee, head bowed. “I’m here to make sure you do have a reason, Your Worship. At least until he’s back on his feet and able to defend himself.”
“And what reason would that be?” Neuvillette asked, eyes narrowed.
“I arrived today with half of my companions, the other half awaiting news in Lumidouce, twenty eight in total, Your Worship,” the girl explained, and then raised her head so she could stare at him in the eye, proud and challenging. “Say the word, and we’ll be yours so long Tartaglia is under your care.”
“Mine?” Neuvillette asked, pinpointing the contradiction as, if she were speaking truth, they were very clearly Tartaglia’s, and no one else’s. “For what?”
“Anything, Your Worship,” the girl said. “Everything. His Excellency the Eleventh did not tolerate sloppiness in his lieutenants.”
Nearly thirty Fatui lieutenants, if she was to be believed. The Knave had only ever brought four lieutenants into Fontaine, from what he remembered. The hierarchy was brutal, according to the reports and evidence that had been presented in court whenever Fatui were convicted of wrongdoing in Fontaine. It took exemplary skill to survive long enough to be promoted to that rank.
“And should I refuse?” Neuvillette asked, intuiting the answer but wishing nonetheless to hear it for himself.
“Then we’ll get him out, Your Worship, and I promise you, you won’t be able to kill all of us before we do.”
“You don’t know that,” he said, shrewd.
“I do, Your Worship,” she replied, unfolding back to her feet neatly. “Understand, he would be sorely disappointed otherwise. He trained us better than that.”
“I see,” Neuvillette said, unable to find fault in her reasoning. “Your Honor, by the way. Miss…?”
“Ekaterina,” the girl replied dutifully.
“The correct style,” Neuvillette said, standing up. “It is Your Honor , not Your Worship.” He stared her down one last time, as he spoke, but she refused to flinch. “I am a Dragon, Miss Ekaterina, not a God. Do mind the distinction.” He walked around the desk to stand next to her, and then motioned for the door. “Lead the way.”
“Your… Honor?” She asked, on guard.
“I will not hire people I have never met,” he explained crisply, eyebrows arched ever so slightly. “You will conduct introductions, and afterwards I will make my decision.”
“Of course,” she said, neatly recovered. “Please, this way.”
“Sedene,” Neuvillette said, as they stepped out into the main office. “Cancel the rest of my appointments today, I have business to attend to outside the Palais.”
“Of course, Monsieur.”
He had nothing to lose, after all.
Wriothesley disapproved.
Then again, the Duke disapproved of four fifths of everything happening in Fontaine at any given time. It was his most valuable quality, the ability to see the exploits in the system, and all the places were rot and malaise had made themselves home at. Before, when his role was merely to uphold the law of the land, Neuvillette found his insights invaluable, as he could feel out the places where the aristocracy and other powerful factions made use of the law for their benefit.
But that was then, and this was now.
Now, Neuvillette was placed above the law, overseeing it all, and every systemic injustice Wriothesley brought to his attention felt like a personal failure on his part. There was rot in the very foundations of Fontane, the law they all had held so sacred for so long, but Neuvillette had no idea how to go about fixing it. Neither did the Duke, his daughters or Furina, who kept avoiding their conversation with the same skill she had avoided detection for five hundred years.
Ekaterina, however.
Ekaterina had ideas.
More than that, she had action plans and diagrams and carefully mapped out loopholes. The Duke hated every single one of them, more so because, as Neuvillette was coming around to accept, Ekaterina had a very poignant habit of being right. Despite the first impression, he’d come to learn she was not only older than Tartaglia, but just shy of the Duke’s age. She was just short and well aware a lifetime of desk work had left her with a very plain face that looked much younger when she braided her hair just so. She was Tartaglia’s secretary and second in command, and she was a vicious, cunning creature who delivered results no matter what conundrum Neuvillette presented her with.
“Here is the file with the Baron’s request, and here’s the evidence of his colluding with the Sinthe ring, you can see the payment trail on page four,” she said, delivering very slim folders to his desk. She gave him a long, annoyed look. “And this is your daily reminder that you should dissolve the aristocracy and incarcerate all of them.”
“Duly noted,” Neuvillette said, “is Miss Navia still scheduled for today?”
“After lunch, yes,” Ekaterina said, briskly reshuffling the piles on his desk, which admittedly, were much smaller since she and Sedene began working together on the new system. “We should have the dossier ready by then.”
“Thank you,” Neuvillette said, out of habit, and as ever, she took the time to squint dubiously at him.
“It’s my job,” she said, like she always did, and then stalked out with her bounty of folders just in time to meet the Baron at the entrance.
Her demeanor shifted until she was invisible, a mouse-like clerk clearly beneath the Baron’s notice. Neuvillette watched him put his coat and his hat atop her pile of files, nearly toppling her over in the process, and resisted the urge to snarl.
He had all he needed to gut the man on his desk, anyway.
It was fine.
Surprisingly, it was Clorinde of all people, who not only approved of Neuvillette’s decision to accept Tartaglia’s lieutenants into his service, but actively volunteered to look after them.
“They follow orders, in spirit and letter,” Clorinde explained, after she completed her report on the week’s activities. “Not surprising, to be honest, considering their leader.”
“Ah, yes,” Neuvillette said, as he looked over her report of their efforts: mostly clean up of monsters and other violent creatures outside the Court, sent into a frenzy after the flood and endangering the recovery efforts, but also peacekeeping work to support the Spina’s efforts. “You became friends, didn’t you? Before his trial?”
Clorinde gave him an odd look.
“Friends is a strong word, Your Honor,” she said sternly. “We sparred a few times, and he insisted on buying me a meal after every single one, since I would not accept payment otherwise.” She paused a moment, frowning. “But I suppose there are few ways for swordspeople to get to know each other, besides crossing blades.”
“And what was your assessment, then?” Neuvillette asked, giving into the curiosity burning a hole somewhere under his ribs.
“Well-meaning chaos, mostly,” Clorinde said, and then paused. “And… a shocking lack of hatred, for one so high up Fatui hierarchy.” She noticed him staring, he thought, because she smiled wryly. “I cannot recall seeing Tartaglia visibly angry, or being needlessly violent. For a man capable of such destruction, he struck me as remarkably restrained. Even as he was convicted,” she added, shrugging slowly. “He seemed more incredulous than anything else. I wonder what might have transpired, if you had not stopped him, Your Honor.”
“I could not afford to find out, at the time,” Neuvillette said, oddly defensive to his own ears. “There were innocents present, and merely that first display of power made me worry he might place the audience in danger, as he vented his frustrations.”
Clorinde hummed.
“They told me he raised a dead god, in Liyue,” she said, after a moment. “His lieutenants. They have many stories to share, if prodded enough.”
“I do recall news coming in, claiming an ancient enemy of the Geo Archon had been freed of his bonds shortly after his death,” Neuvillette said, frowning. “Tartaglia was responsible?”
“According to his men, yes,” Clorinde insisted, “and yet somehow I don’t feel that’s the whole of it?”
“Liyue Harbor remains standing, prosperous as ever,” Neuvillette noted, “no significant destruction to speak of, despite the singular hatred this particular god had for it and its people.” Neuvillette paused to consider. “As a matter of fact, the news that Liyue’s Qixing managed to defend their home without assistance from their recently deceased Archon increased confidence in their competency and provided a significant boost to their economy as they became the first nation to be ruled by humans, rather than an Archon.”
“Very convenient for the Liyue Qixing,” Clorinde said, eyes narrowed. “Who despite Tartaglia’s actions did not expel the Fatui from their land, and in fact tolerate the continued, undisturbed operation of the Northland Bank in their city.”
Curious and curiouser.
“Perhaps when he wakes up,” Neuvillette said, “he’ll be willing to explain what actually happened.”
“Perhaps,” Clorinde said, slowly sipping her tea.
There was a knock on the door, sharp and purposeful.
“Enter,” Neuvillette said, eyes narrowing as Ekaterina stepped inside briskly.
“I need you not to panic,” she said, taking a moment to look at them both like one would a small child about to be given dire news. She took a deep breath. “News just came in, the Fortress of Meropide blew up.”