Beneath the soaring dome of the Zapolyarny Palace, the air hung so heavy it was hard to breathe, as though the cold had frozen it solid. The enormous crystal chandeliers poured down a pale, bloodless light that did nothing at all to lift the gloom weighing on everyone present.
News of Alice crossing the border had swept through the upper ranks of the Fatui like a knife-edged wind. The Jester, Pierro, The Rooster, Pulcinella, the Regrator, Pantalone, and a badly weakened Tartaglia - every face in the hall was grim as frost.
"Your Majesty the Empress, the blame for this lies entirely with Ajax!" Pantalone could hold it in no longer and stood up to denounce Tartaglia outright.
Childe was The Rooster's man, promoted by The Rooster himself, and Pantalone had never gotten along with The Rooster. On top of that, Childe came knocking for money every other day. Pantalone had wanted to pay these leeches back for a long while, and now he'd finally found his opening.
"Oh? How so?"
"Your Majesty the Empress, I can explain! This is all a misunderstanding!" Tartaglia had a grievance he couldn't put into words.
If they were going to trace it back properly, the root of it lay with the Tsaritsa herself.
The Heart of God operation in Sumeru had been wrecked by Ye Xi. Her Majesty had ordered him to investigate, so of course he had to go and get an explanation out of Ye Xi.
He'd only wanted to arrange a meeting with the man, which was why he'd stooped to such a shabby scheme. Who could have guessed that blowing up a few fish with a little girl would tear open a hole this big!
Kids these days were impossible to look after.
"Enough. I don't care whose misunderstanding it was. The only thing that matters now is how we get that walking plague, Alice, out of here."
The Tsaritsa had never cared about process, only results. How Klee had ended up here was irrelevant. What mattered was that the witch Alice must not be allowed to interfere with the collection of the Heart of God.
If a witch got her hands into Snezhnaya's plans, things would turn very ugly indeed.
Pierro looked at Pantalone's relaxed, this-has-nothing-to-do-with-me posture and said coldly, "Pantalone, you think you can stay out of this? That witch doesn't listen to reason. If she decides to go after your Northland Bank, you'll be begging on the street by nightfall."
"What? Then what are we supposed to do?" There was a thread of panic in Pantalone's voice that he couldn't quite hide, like a rabbit that had just heard a twig snap.
His gaze darted from face to face, full of urgency and helplessness, hunting for someone with an answer. But every brow in the hall was knotted tight, as if a thick bank of storm cloud had settled over them all, and nobody had one to give.
The Northland Bank was his last line of defense. Without it, what kind of Regrator would he be? He'd be a pauper overnight.
Pulcinella paced back and forth across the hall. His polished boots struck the cold marble in a dull, steady rhythm that echoed through the silence and landed on everyone's nerves like a hammer.
Sweat beaded across his forehead, fat drops sliding down his deeply lined cheeks. The room wasn't warm - if anything it was cold - but fear had him pouring sweat.
"We have to think of something. We cannot let that plague of a woman start a disaster in Snezhnaya. The consequences would be beyond imagining."
His words came fast and hard, each one squeezed out through clenched teeth, as if saying them loudly enough might drive off the dread clinging to his back.
Tartaglia tried to speak, but his throat was parched raw, as though a coal were burning in it.
He'd recovered a little strength, yet he was still frail, his body trembling faintly. His lips parted, and all that escaped was a thin sigh. In the end he chose silence.
He was cursing himself. All he'd wanted was one meeting with Ye Xi, to deliver the Tsaritsa's message. How had it turned into this?
He kept turning the blame over and over. If he'd only gone about it another way, none of this trouble would exist.
He genuinely wanted to slap himself. What on earth had he been thinking, setting his sights on Klee of all people?
The Tsaritsa sat on her high throne, and something rare showed in her eyes: anxiety. That famously ice-carved face was faintly twisted now, and her hand gripped the armrest so hard the knuckles had gone white as the pale jade inlaid there.
"Whatever method you use, keep Alice calm. She must not sense that we hold any ill will toward Klee, and she absolutely must not disrupt our plans." The Empress's voice was cold and imperious, but the sliver of tension threaded through it did not escape the sharp ears in the room.
She knew exactly what Alice was capable of. The witch's arrival was a bomb that could go off at any second, and it forced her to tread carefully.
Just then a Fatui soldier came rushing in, so hurried that he stumbled over his own feet. He dropped to one knee, shaking, and reported in a voice that shook worse. "R-report, Your Majesty the Empress! There's a woman outside. She says she wants to see Your Majesty. We can't stop her at all!"
"Who told you to stop her? Let her in at once!"
The hall went so quiet you could have heard a pin land. Every gaze swung to the Empress as though drawn by a magnet, waiting on her word.
The Empress drew a deep breath, her chest rising and falling hard as she forced herself steady.
"Let her in," she said slowly. "But every one of you had better be at your sharpest. If anything goes wrong, you know the consequences."
Her voice had recovered some of its old authority, yet the slight tremor at the end of the sentence betrayed her.
Alice strolled into the hall at an unhurried pace. Her golden curls hung loose, catching the chandelier light until they shimmered like dancing flame.
A faint smile sat at the corner of her mouth. It looked gentle enough, but her eyes carried an edge no one could ignore, as though they could read every thought in the room.
She wore a magnificent robe, ornate yet weightless, embroidered with mysterious runes that drifted with each step. Those runes seemed almost alive, flickering with strange light.
"It's been a while, everyone." Alice's voice was clear and lovely as a mountain spring - and to Fatui ears, it sounded like a demon whispering. Her gaze passed over them one by one, sharp as a drawn blade, and each person it touched felt as if the edge had grazed their skin.
At last her eyes settled on Pulcinella. "I hear my little Klee has been a guest of yours. Strange that nobody thought to tell me."
"A misunderstanding! It's all a misunderstanding!"
Pulcinella forced out a smile uglier than a sob and said respectfully, "Lady Alice, this is entirely a misunderstanding. Miss Klee was invited out to play by our Childe in Liyue Harbor, and there were some accidents along the way, which is how she ended up in Snezhnaya. We were just about to send her home." His voice was stiff, every word grinding out between his teeth.
Alice raised an eyebrow, her smile not quite a smile. "Oh? Accidents? I'd say your Fatui Childe is simply too hospitable - hospitable enough to invite my daughter all the way to Snezhnaya."
The mockery in her tone was unmistakable, and the words went in like a row of thin knives. Pulcinella and the rest felt their faces burn, as if they'd been slapped in front of a crowd.
"I have no interest in whatever it is you people are doing up here in Snezhnaya. But don't drag my daughter into it."
The Tsaritsa rose from her throne, her movements a touch stiff, and came forward a few steps, keeping her tone as even as she could. "Lady Alice, this incident was indeed an oversight on the part of the Fatui. To express our apologies, we are willing to offer you and Miss Klee our most sincere compensation."
There was a hint of appeasement in her eyes - something that would never, under normal circumstances, appear on that proud face.
She had no choice. The woman belonged to the Hexenzirkel. Pull any name at random out of that circle and you'd find someone you did not want to provoke.
Take Gold, the alchemist Rhinedottir. The Cataclysm all those years ago was tangled up with Rhinedottir's work.
If Rhinedottir decided to gift Snezhnaya a second abyssal invasion, this frozen land would become completely uninhabitable.
Alice glanced at the Empress and gave a small shake of her head, the gesture dripping with disdain. "Compensation? I have no use for anything of yours. All I want right now is to take Klee home."
"Of course. That's no trouble at all."
"Pierro, go and bring Klee here."
At those words from Alice, every person in the hall let out a breath.
A short while later, Klee came trotting in behind an Electro Cicin Mage.
"Mama! What are you doing here?" Klee hadn't seen her mother in ages, and she lit up with joy.
Seeing her daughter unharmed, Alice relaxed. "Mama came to take you home."
Then she took out her Dodoco phone and placed a call.
A moment later, Albedo's voice came through from the other end. "Aunt Alice?"
"Albedo, dear, you can pull our rockets back. It's safe over here."
"Understood, Auntie."
That one offhand remark turned Pantalone's legs to water.
Tartaglia and the others broke out in cold sweat. Good grief - they'd been standing on the edge of the grave this whole time!
If a fight had broken out just now, would bombs actually have come raining down on the palace!?
While everyone was still recovering from the shock, Alice turned suddenly to Tartaglia. There was an appraising edge in her eyes, a look that seemed to strip a man bare. "So you're the one who brought my daughter here?"
Tartaglia's chest clenched, as if an invisible hand had closed around his heart. He struggled to stand and bow, but his body was heavy as lead, and he'd barely lifted himself before weakness dropped him back down. "Lady Alice, I sincerely apologize. I only wanted to use Miss Klee to arrange a meeting with Ye Xi. I never imagined it would spiral into all of this."
"You used my daughter to get a meeting?"
"That..." Tartaglia had nothing to say.
The Tsaritsa's brow creased. This was bad. The woman had come to settle accounts.
Then inspiration struck, and she said calmly, "Alice, why don't we do this. I'll award Childe to you as recompense. Take him and go."
Tartaglia: ???
____
Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 50 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter
________________________________________
If you want more chapters, please consider supporting my page on (P). with 50 advanced chapters available on (P)
👻 Join the crew by searching Leanzin on (P). You know the spot! 😉