"Alice—!?" Cold sweat ran down Pulcinella's face.
Those three syllables echoed through his skull, and with them came a very bad feeling.
Watching the Mayor's expression change, the Regrator, Pantalone, sneered. "Mister Mayor, you're not looking well."
"Who would have thought the great Lord Mayor could be frightened out of his wits by a single name?"
"Hmph, what would you know!" Pulcinella snorted, brows knitting tight. "Ajax, take this... er..."
Klee noticed his eyes on her and giggled. "It's Klee, Spark Knight of the Knights of Favonius of Mondstadt!"
"Ah, yes, yes, little knight, hurry home! And she is to be escorted the whole way, safely!"
"But..."
Tartaglia looked more than a little awkward. "The thing is, I used the Foul Legacy Transformation just now to shield Klee from the blast. The drain on me is too much..."
Every time he burned through the power of the Foul Legacy Transformation, his body needed time to recover from the strain.
Asking him to carry Klee all the way from Snezhnaya back to Mondstadt right now would just about kill him.
Pulcinella's face folded into a mask of misery.
Pantalone kept up his needling from the side. "Surely the Mayor isn't that stingy? You can't even bear the cost of one small child's room and board?"
As he saw it, Pulcinella was simply being a miser, unwilling to let Klee stay at the Zapolyarny Palace and enjoy herself for a while.
With that, he bent down and patted Klee on the head. "Little knight, why don't you stay in Snezhnaya a few days? Enjoy our finest food, and then we'll send you back to Mondstadt. How does that sound?"
"Absolutely not!"
Before Klee could answer, Pulcinella shoved Pantalone aside.
"Enough of your sniping. Do you have any idea who this child's mother is!?"
Seeing Pulcinella so grim, Pantalone raised an eyebrow. "A witch, isn't she? Rosalyne was a witch too, back when she was one of our Harbingers. Is that really worth this much panic?"
"She is no ordinary witch!"
Pulcinella remembered something Rosalyne had said, back when she was still alive.
At the time, Rosalyne had been assigned to Mondstadt, tasked with seizing the Anemo Archon's Gnosis.
And she had said, plainly, that the best possible moment to go to Mondstadt was a window when Alice happened to be away from Mondstadt.
He had been curious then, about who this Alice was.
Rosalyne had gone white in the face and told him that under no circumstances should anyone provoke Alice. That madwoman had blown Old Mondstadt into rubble and set off hilichurls like fireworks.
Listening to Rosalyne describe Alice's terrifying power, Pulcinella had mopped sweat off his brow like a man possessed.
Afterward, whenever Rosalyne was in Mondstadt, she took a detour the instant she spotted Klee. She wouldn't even face Alice's daughter.
And now, through some absurd twist of fate, they had brought that little grande dame all the way to Snezhnaya!
After hearing Pulcinella out, Pantalone felt a chill of his own.
"This, this little girl's mother is really that formidable?"
"Obviously. Do you want the Zapolyarny Palace to become the Zapolyarny Ruins?"
Pulcinella laid it on thick. "Or, tell me, would you like your Northland Bank turned into the Rubble Bank?"
"Ahem..."
Pantalone wiped his forehead and put away his mockery. "Then what do we do? How do we get the little knight back to Mondstadt?"
"No idea."
Pulcinella had nothing.
"But if we keep the little knight here, sooner or later she'll draw Alice to us. And then we'll be in real trouble."
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