Chapter Text
Something felt different about Arlecchino’s office in the House of the Hearth.
Sandrone was no stranger to this place. She often came to deliver presents to the children, like she was doing now with her mint decorated gift basket laid on her fellow Harbinger’s desk. But like most places of little intellectual import, she had not committed a full scan of the office’s physical features to memory, and so she was left to review any perceived differences based on memories she possessed in her emotional module.
This, the Marionette hated doing. Humans, even neohumans (especially neohumans, Sandrone supposed), only possessed one distinct pattern of image recollection known colloquially as “memory.” She, on the other hand, boasted several more efficient methods, which both arithmetically and logically deemed her superior to her progenitors.
So why should she rely on a human’s feelings, emotions, desires?
She sighed and looked around.
Arlecchino’s office interior spoke to the elusive nature of her work. It was both minimalist to a fault and laid with dangers undetectable by conventional means. The ink bottle on her desk, for instance, carried paralyzing poison synthesized from bellflower haze. Knives rested inside half the books in mirrored cupboard behind a linden wood chair, which itself carried bulbous wooden tips that were primed with smoke grenades, Lyney’s invention, Sandrone deduced.
And so, perhaps fortunately, despite her initial confusion, it did not take long for Sandrone to notice the new nonlethal implements resting on the shelves to her left. Old useless cogs and gears, pre-cataclysm scribbles on crumbled parchments, formulas of a far lesser mind than the poet who came before her.
These were the most harmless, and most useless, new things in Arlecchino’s office.
“Those are my teacups,” Sandrone observed.
“They are,” Arlecchino replied curtly, fetching leaves from the cabinets opposite the shelves. “Do you want them back?”
“No,” she scoffed. “I’ve constructed a new set. It’s better than my old ones. The heat retention-”
“Black?”
“…I’m sorry?”
“Do you want black tea, Sandrone?” Arlecchino asked. “Fontanians have also taken to a new leaf from this year’s harvest in the Chenyu Vale. We can try that, if you’d prefer.”
“Black is fine. Thank you.”
Arlecchino nodded. She fetched the old tea set from the shelf and laid three cups on her desk along with Sandrone’s old porcelain brewing pot. There was a chip just above the spout, an unnecessary injury from when Columbina once attempted to gloss the exterior with machine oil.
Her new pot was designed to survive blunt damage from slippery fingers.
“The children and I appreciate you taking the time to come here,” Arlecchino said. “I imagine you must be quite busy these days.”
“If I was, I wouldn’t be here,” she replied. “It’s done, Arlecchino.”
Arlecchino was almost always in motion. It was a matter of diligence and principle, and it kept her one to two steps ahead of her adversaries. So it was only for a moment, but Sandrone watched as Arlecchino’s fingers froze as they moved to heat the pot with hot water.
“So,” muttered the Knave, “Her Majesty the Tsaritsa has granted you leave of your responsibilities as Harbinger. Should I congratulate you, my former colleague?”
“No,” she shook her head. “My request is temporary. I’m to arrange my affairs in order then return to Snezhnaya. I came today to ask for something and to… say goodbye for now.”
“Leaving us again so soon?”
“Not your finest joke, Arlecchino,” she snorted. “Surely you don’t think I went through all the trouble of a rebuild just to have my core ripped out of me again?”
“Sandrone.”
A vicious glare brewed in Arlecchino’s eyes. Her gaze snapped to Sandrone, who shivered as if a spider weaved its web down her back. An impossible whistle screamed from inside the heated porcelain pot.
“While I appreciate our pre-tea banter,” she said. “That was not a joke. Please remember that many of us in Nod Krai watched you die. We mourned you. One of us spent days channeling Teyvat’s primordial energies in the hopes of seeing you again. You hold your own life in much higher regard than the rest of us. I would prefer you acted like it.”
One of us.
Arlecchino did not have to be so vague. Both of them knew who that was.
“I’m,” Sandrone tried to conjure an adequate excuse. “Sorry.”
“Good,” the Knave’s soft expression returned. She poured freshly brewed tea into three cups. “Now, I presume these affairs of yours have something to do with why you’ve returned to Fontaine.”
Sandrone lifted her old cup to her lips. It was searing hot thanks to her poorly received retort, and she had to modulate her mouth’s heat tolerance to compensate. It was also quite tasteless; the earthy flavor in the leaves had been half obliterated by high heat, also thanks to her. Sandrone swallowed her impulse to complain.
“Do you remember those files you looked up for me?” Sandrone asked. “About Rene de Petrichor and the Narzissenkreuz Ordo?”
“I do,” Arlecchino tasted her own tea, her face and crimson eyes unreadable.
“I would like whatever other intelligence the House has left regarding them.”
“Whatever?” Arlecchino set down her cup and folded her legs together. “Sandrone. I do not run a charity organization or a research institute. The whereabouts of a cult from five hundred years ago does not concern me or any of my children. What about your own research material?”
“Lacking,” Sandrone shrugged. “I mean. Of course my personal curated library is helpful, but its reference contents were barely enough to construct the world-formula last time. If I could acquire this information more easily, Arlecchino, I would not be here asking for it.”
“I thought your business with the Ordo was finished upon discerning your formula.”
“I need to discern one. Again.”
“Use the old one you came up with.”
“Stop being obtuse,” Sandrone snapped. “The schematics of the old formula, of every world-formula for that matter, are unique. The formula you’re referring to was used to calculate the fates of Columbina when she reached the terminal beginning of time. It’s unusable for any other purpose now.”
“Then what do you need a new formula for?” Arlecchino pressed.
The answer caught itself in Sandrone’s throat. It was simple, the answer to the Knave’s question, so simple that anyone who heard it would know immediately that it was an answer that had not required a single iota of power from Sandrone’s processing core, that it could only have originated from that troublesome emotional module gifted to her from the Lord Artificer.
“You wouldn’t understand,” she murmured instead.
“Sandrone,” Arlecchino sighed. “While I don’t see any harm in giving you a handful of wrinkled documents, we are both aware that I do not possess your computational talents. Therefore, I cannot possibly know why you are so interested in digging up the ruins of the Ordo. If you won’t tell me, then should I not assume the worst, given their history?”
“If I explained everything we would be here for weeks.”
“I am not asking for any more convoluted paperwork,” Arlecchino gestured to the shelves. “As you can see, I have plenty. What I am asking for is the reason. The goal. The why. Despite your best attempts at pretending to be a machine, Sandrone, even you are driven by base, ordinary desires, and I doubt you lack the intelligence to distill your wants into short, comprehensible speech that even I can understand.”
“Should I be thanking you that you care so much about my research for once?” Sandrone smirked with her hands clenched. “Or should I be annoyed that you’re being unnecessarily pushy about getting in my way? I’m simply asking you for the remainder of the research. You already handed over the most sensitive material on Jakob and Rene last time. What’s the big deal?”
“Call it my responsibility as your fellow countryman and Harbinger,” Arlecchino said. “Or call it concern between friends. Either way, I’m sure you have other methods. If it is so hard to answer a seemingly simple question, why not try somewhere else?”
“Fine. Have it your way,” Sandrone frowned. “Alain Guillotin and Rene de Petrichor are both pieces of my past. They both tried and failed to save the world, but the genius they left behind is why I was able to complete their work. I’d like to make peace with them.”
Arlecchino smiled.
“What’s so funny?” Sandrone hissed. “You wanted an answer. It’s the truth!”
“At the House of the Hearth, it’s understood from a young age that the ability to deceive your friends is as important as being able to deceive your enemies,” Arlecchino replied. “I should applaud Lyney and the others. They have rubbed off of you.”
“But I haven’t-“
“The difference between us,” Arlecchino ignored her, “is that we at the House have properly learned how to spin lies that our brothers and sisters can traverse across threads without getting lost, without becoming entangled by our own designs. How long can you keep up this one lie, Sandrone?”
Arlecchino’s eyes shifted to the open door into her office, where someone hid just in earshot.
“You can come in now.”
Sandrone sighed.
She hadn’t missed that Arlecchino had prepared a third cup of tea. She had ignored it in the hopes that it would vanish on its own. In the back of her mind, she knew why it was there. Arlecchino was not as sly as she appeared. Her foreshadowing was too obvious. Or maybe she meant to tease the Marionette with the slow encroachment of the inevitable, the way Teyvat and its laws mocked its people with predetermined, inescapable fates.
Bare feet danced into Arlecchino’s office. It was accompanied by a gasp and an unmistakable chime, like triangles gently tapped at a winter opera about snow fae, a soft waltz in adagio devoted to ethereal, long-lost Remuria and its gilded arches brimming beneath sunlit waters.
Sandrone didn’t need to see her. In yet another frustratingly inefficient gesture, she had forever committed her white ribbons and lakkaberry soft skin to hardware memory. She had perfectly pinpointed the exact color scheme to recreate her pink mauve highlights. The only remaining piece of the puzzle was the color of those irises beneath the bandages she had draped over her eyes.
But right now, Sandrone was not ready, did not want to find out.
“You told her,” she glowered. “You told her! We had a deal, Arlecchino!”
“Our deal was that I not tell Columbina Hyposelenia that you asked for your core to be returned to the Fontaine Research Institute,” Arlecchino replied, “a deal that I upheld to the highest standards that we can give to friends of the House of the Hearth.”
“Then why is she here!”
“Our deal did not include not informing Columbina Hyposelenia that the Marionette was due to visit the House of the Hearth on business matters unknown.”
Sandrone swore. Any guilt that she might have felt over telling a simple white lie earlier had all but evaporated.
“I can’t believe this. I knew I shouldn’t have come here,” she spat. “This was an intentional breach of contract, Arlecchino, and you know it. I’m taking the gifts with me. You can be certain that you won’t be invited to my next tea party.”
“You will do no such thing. And what about-”
“Arlecchino.”
A voice so airy that Sandrone believed the wisps of steam from her tea could blow it away cut the present argument to shreds. Its nature was an old wistful melancholy, but Sandrone was experienced enough to sense its fury, an ancient anger that ignited even the dead flowers at the bottom of her tea cup and swirled the petals dormant in the poison on the desk. Arlecchino leaned back in her seat and unfurled her legs.
“Can you leave us for a few minutes please,” asked the voice.
Arlecchino glanced at Sandrone and gave her a mocking grin. The Knave nodded and exited the stage, taking her teacup with her.
An uncomfortable silence followed. Sandrone would’ve enjoyed such quiet under more normal circumstances, but with this silence came an electrifying presence. It circled in a half moon behind her, daring Sandrone to turn around and meet its gaze.
And Sandrone would have. She would, should, have relished the opportunity for a mean verbal jab, just like all the other times in the past. She had even prepared the usual battery of snarky bites.
“You look skinnier. You look like you’ve been feeding on the same shriveled grass that the deer folk put up with. I, on the other hand, have been enjoying my spin on Gateau Debord, courtesy of the raise I received from Her Majesty the Tsaritsa. I can share some if you’d like. I’ll even provide complementary coffee, that is, unless the Moon Goddess still prefers to drink the water she bathes with in her cave.”
But Sandrone said none of this, despite the number of times she had practiced it in the mirror.
Frail, tender fingers touched her. They rested on her key that had begun to move again, each digit slightly ticklish like feather barbs. Sandrone knew that her key was already accelerating, but it picked up speed like the wheels of a Snezhnayan rail.
She had planned a response for this moment too, something about not touching her, about threatening to make the Moon Goddess live another day with a heavy key stuck to her back.
But she couldn’t.
She had read the letters.
Arlecchino’s prose was succinct. It minced fewer words than most, but even the blunt, to-the-point style of the Knave found it difficult to simplify the cosmic brilliance that trembled through the undergrowth of Nod-Krai as a determined Kuutar tried once, twice, thrice to leverage the trilune authority to revive a lifeless doll.
It was such a stupid act Sandrone couldn’t help but laugh the first time she read it.
“How useless,” she had muttered. “She treats that power like some savior’s plaything.”
How many times would such power have buried the ascended Second Harbinger beneath fabled moonlight? And yet, when its strength proved futile in this regard the goddess cast it all away with no more than a hand wave, returning her rightful authority to the land, because its usefulness had nothing left to offer her.
And now those very same hands were touching her again.
“Aren’t you going to say something nasty to me, Sandrone?” Columbina whispered.
At the sound of her voice, like clockwork, Sandrone swiveled her neck and blurted.
“…What?”
And then she scanned beautiful gleaming pearl crescents into her memory.
“I thought touching your key might get your attention,” Columbina smiled. “It seems I was wrong. Or maybe you’ve changed since I last saw you, Sandrone.”
“Columbina,” Sandrone growled, then retracted her fists, folded her arms, and puffed out her chest. “Hmph. I’m impressed. And here I thought you were going to run crying to me, or ask if I was real, or if I even still remembered you.”
“Why would that be necessary? You remembered Arlecchino, and…” Columbina tilted her head to the side. “Did you want me to cry for you again, Sandrone?”
“No. Never mind that!” Sandrone snapped with burning cheeks. “How long were you even snooping around for, listening to us?”
“Hmm…” Columbina pretended to count the time. “Since the beginning, maybe?”
Damn you, Arlecchino.
“So why are you looking for them?” Columbina asked.
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“Do you want to join the Narzissenkreuz Ordo?”
“It’s the Narzissenkreuz-” Sandrone paused. “You remember.”
“Yes,” Columbina nodded. “The Narzissenkreuz Ordo. You corrected me last time. I don’t think an order full of narcissists is right for you, Sandrone.”
“I’m not joining them you dolt,” Sandrone rolled her eyes. “Before he died, Alain asked that I live whatever life that I desired, and my desire is to compile a complete record of the work of his best friend and rival, Rene de Petrichor and one, Jakob Ingold. For intellectual reasons. You wouldn’t understand.”
“…I see. And when are we leaving?”
Again, like clockwork. Was the goddess’s trilune authority its own world-formula in disguise?
“…What?”
“I’ve never seen your home country before, Sandrone,” Columbina smiled. “If there’s anyone here who can bake as well as you, I think I will like Fontaine.”
“No. No, no, no,” Sandrone shook her head. “You are not coming with me, are you crazy?”
“Why not?”
“Because!” Sandrone growled to stall for time. “Because I don’t have time to babysit you when I’m on my research expedition. This is a serious investigative operation into ancient ruins and I’m here to do actual work. We are not going sightseeing through all of Fontaine.”
“That sounds like fun, Sandrone.”
“It’s not supposed to be fun, and you are not coming with me, Columbina.”
“But I thought you might like to experience this journey with me.”
“Oh please! Who would want to experience anything with-”
Sandrone froze.
She could not say another word.
She didn’t have her world-formula in hand, but she had seen this spindle of fate before, could sense the myriad algorithms, folded in their peculiar arrangements governing the world’s events, moving time from one visible node to the next.
It would start with her finishing her thought, puffing her cheeks, and storming out of the office. Arlecchino would give her that chastising look, the same disapproving gaze that Rosalyne gave her before she died.
She would tell herself it was for the best and lose herself spending a great deal of time delving into the depths of ancient Fontanian ruins, return to the Institute of Natural Philosophy, scour the submerged Tower of Gestalt, find its most hidden chambers and shameful secrets, and then, at the end of it all, when every truth of this world lay naked before her for the taking…
…What? Then what?
It was so predictable wasn’t it, these cruel games Teyvat played? The smallest variables could cast away the red-strung fates of all the living into oblivion. It wasn’t something she could calculate, but in death, Sandrone had learned to intuit it. It was the one time her emotional module had brought her any utility at all.
It was how she knew that if she finished her sentence now, she would never see Columbina again.
She gritted her teeth and swallowed her pride.
Sandrone stood in order to cross the distance between the two. It had been a while since they had stood so close to each other. Columbina’s hands rested at her sides. Sandrone picked the closest, the right hand, and held it with her left. The sun dipped below the top of the window behind them and bathed Sandrone’s glove with gold, which in turn, cast its protective shadow over everything below.
“Sandrone?”
“Just,” Sandrone bit her lip. “Just don’t get in my way.”
She let the moment pass and exited the office into the waiting arms of Arlecchino’s bemused expression.
But Sandrone became aware of another pair of penetrating eyes watching her leave. They caressed her from head to toe, and only when Sandrone disappeared down the hall did they turn away to gaze at the spot where the sun had touched the moon.