Chapter Text
I knew the kid was trouble the moment he walked in.
He looked like a classic heartbreaker: blond, lanky, gams long enough to reach Springvale and a vest that left nothing to the imagination. The toothy grin that broke out on his face when he caught sight of me was earnest, like a little puppy you couldn’t help but throw a bone. Not like me. Any innocence I might’ve had’s been stained black—midnight black—by all the things I’ve seen.
(This Archons-damned town. Mondstadt sure croons a pretty song, but get to know his streets and he’s a dirty drunkard like the rest of us.)
(I don’t actually drink yet but you get my drift.)
“Fischl’s Investigations,” I said. I took a long drag of my violet licorice, holding it between my index and middle finger. “If you need a problem solved, you’ve come to the right place.”
“Um,” the kid said, “I was looking for Alfry. Is this still... the Guild intelligence department?”
Adorable. “As far as the Knights of Favonius tax records are concerned, sure. But between you and me, this is my beat. Alfry is... how do I put it...”—I gestured towards the nearby pane of glass, which revealed the sun setting fast like a wretched traitor—“...window dressing.”
“Oh, okay,” said the kid. “Well, hi, I’m Bennett! Adventurer extraordinare! I thought I knew everyone here, but... guess not.”
It took a moment to place the name. Of course: Bennett “Benny” Foundling, adopted ward of the Guild’s Mondstadt branch. Taken in as a baby, raised like one of the Guild’s own. Word was he was like a bad luck charm: wherever he went he left a string of broken hearts and sprained ankles in his wake.
And yet, despite knowing this, I was drawn in. His eyes were a beguiling emerald, like the poison used by the villain in the classic novel The Snezhnayan Songbird. And his voice; Barbatos be damned, his voice: sweet like the dollop of honey you’d use to chase down a shot of non-alcoholic red grape juice at the old Angel’s Share. Sweet like...
... no. I shook my head. It was too early to get into my gritty backstory yet.
“Benny, huh,” I said. “The name’s Fischl. Fi to my friends, but I don’t have any. Because I’m a black sheep.” I extended a hand, which he shook delicately. “No surprise we haven’t met yet. I’ve only had this desk half a year.”
“But isn’t that Alfry’s desk? Should you really have your shoes on it?—”
“Alfry doesn’t work Tuesdays,” I told him. “Now, spill it. What brings a doll like you all the way here?”
Benny bit his lip. “Can, uh... can you promise not to tell Branch Master Cyrus?”
A pretty face and intrigue? I was done for.
So here was the deal: Benny was friends with some boy he’d met near Wolvendom. (From the way Benny’s eyes lit up describing him, I figured he was sweet on the kid. Rule number one of these kinds of story: there’s always a romance angle and it’s never good news.) Now this kid—‘Razor’ his name was, as in ‘I shave my legs with a badger brush and straight razor’—was a nice boy, Benny said, super polite, super friendly, wouldn’t hurt a fly unless he needed it for his next meal.
But this Razor kid had got himself arrested this morning, and nobody was telling Benny why. The Knights of Favonius wouldn’t let Benny in to see Razor, and nobody at the scene would talk either. Benny was sure it was all just some big misunderstanding—Razor was the nicest kid in the world, he assured me again—and so he wanted my help to clear the air and bail Razor out of his fix.
The curious part was that Benny wanted my help off the books. Benny admitted he was friendly with a couple of faces in the Knights, but he didn’t want to lean on their help... and apparently he didn’t want to go to any of his dozen ‘dads’ in the Guild either. Why my help was fair game, he wouldn’t say, but I think he liked that he didn’t know me any.
Refusing to call in the big guns for help. What does that say about a guy?
My gut feeling was he wanted to be the prince in shining armour himself. A hale young man, testosterone pumping freely through his veins: of course he’d want to be the man of action.
...though, now that I thought about it, that didn’t really fit the facts. A lot of secrets were born of something darker than mere pride, and the kid didn’t strike me as the proud stubborn type.
Maybe... maybe Cyrus knew about this Razor kid and disapproved. A forbidden romance angle: city boy, forest boy.
“Why off the books, Benny?” I said aloud. “Cyrus and Katheryne have more than their share of pull with the Knights, they’d be handy for covering the diplomatic side of things.”
“Oh, um.” Benny’s eyes were on his boots. “I...”
“Spit it out, kid. I want a fatal reveal at the end of act two even less than I want a slug to the chest.”
“A what?... Oh, it’s just... Cyrus and my other Dads do so much for me already. People are always dragging me out of trouble. I want to show Razor I can solve tough problems myself, you know? Be a good luck charm for once.”
Should’ve stuck with your first guess, Fi.
Well yes, Oz, pretty obvious in hindsight, wasn’t it?
No offence intended. Your instincts are good.
Flatterer. I glanced up, trying to catch sight of him, but the glare of the evening sun was no help. Ah, well. Maybe he could go see if any of my usual informants were free.
On it, Fi.
“Well, Benny,” I drawled, “Lady Luck is ever fickle. I can’t guarantee we won’t end up needing some Guild help yet. But don’t you worry your pretty little head for now. Let’s start nice and easy, and have a chat with your friend.”
“The Knights wouldn’t let me visit him,” said Bennett, a pout forming on his wafer-thin lips. “I think they don’t like me. I’m... a bit of a bad luck charm.”
“Then let’s see if I can sweet-talk the Knights.”
As I said, Mondstadt’s a dirty drunkard. Look from a distance, and you may well think the self-styled ‘City of Freedom’ is all gentle breezes and soft-strummed ballads. But like any neatly dressed gent, Mondstadt has his darker side, a seedy underbelly you can’t help but scrape against from time to time, whether you’re a pauper or an aristocrat. Let night fall, and the streets turn mean.
Mean streets beget mean folks. But a dame doesn’t have to be mean herself to walk these paths of shadow. A world of grit and grime ain’t without its heroes, even if they don’t wear no shining armour.
To survive these streets with her soul intact, someone like me’s gotta keep her head high. That’s how you wade through the tar pit and emerge on the other end, filthy but untainted.
It helps to be a little hard-boiled—to have a thick, leathery layer of tough skin on the outside, like a crocodile but strictly metaphorical. Let that outer layer weather the worst the world has to throw at you.
Another thing that helps is having friends in all corners. Folks you can count on in a pinch, when your path leads you through unfamiliar waters.
You need, in other words, a network of informants. An essential asset for any P.I. worth her salt. And I just happened to have the perfect contact to help me crowbar open a case that the Knights already had their grubby mitts all over.
There were a few haunts where you might find a heavy drinker on a weekday evening. Cat’s Tail was ritzy: all fruit slices, low lights, and perfume. They did fine enough mocktails, but it was all young couples and trendsetters, dancing their worries away in blissful ignorance. On the other hand, Angel’s Share had been closed for a year now, since the old owner, Crepus Ragnvindr, had passed away. His son had ordered the place closed before disappearing from town. (Rumour had it the man was running from gambling debts, but my money was on him having one of those spiritual ‘finding yourself’ quarter-life crises like the main suspect in Who Killed Tamago Kenji?.)
That left Little Red Biergarten as the favoured haunt for less fancy drinkers. Cosy place, courtyard with a nice view of the stars, constantly getting noise complaints from the neighbours.
It was mid evening so there were still plenty of families and couples just here for the food. The place’s dinner service was good; I’d been there many a time with Amy and our folks, and their schnitzel and gravy was indescribable.
Gods, she’d been insatiable when it came to that gravy, Amy had. Always trying to scrape extra bits from our folks’ plates.
Amy was my stepsister. (Or was she? All would be revealed.) Sweet girl. Dead, though.
It was a work day so I didn’t feel too bad showing up here in office clothes. I was in my charcoal pinstripe suit with matching slacks, my second-best silk purple shirt, and a lavender-grey striped tie. My derbies were already scuffed from when I’d polished them this weekend—the streets of Mondstadt are no less mean to a grizzled detective’s shoes than they are to the dame herself—but they were still a sight nicer than most of the wrinkled boots I saw about the place.
It’s important in this line of work to stay sharp. You never know who you’ll need to mingle with next, and a freshly pressed two-piece suit and shined shoes will open more doors than a professional bellhop, if you get my drift.
I know what you’re thinking: gee, this Fischl character’s one suave guy. Hey Oz, ask me if I’m a suave guy.
...really, Fi?
Just do it.
Gee. Sounds like this Fischl character’s one suave guy.
Wrong, Oz. I’m no gent; I’m a dame, and I clean up nicely at that. My name’s Fischl von Luftschloss Nafidort with hair the colour of pale ale (which I can’t drink yet) with tar black clip-on extensions that reaches my mid-back. A lot of schmucks tell me I look like Amy (the dead stepsister I mentioned before, pay attention will ya) and yeah sure I fit her clothes but I’ll save the cocktail dresses for when I need to infiltrate a high society soiree. I’m a private investigator but my teeth ain’t crooked yet. I’ve got eyes the colour of apples and unlike my namesake I don’t cover it up with no eye patch. And yeah I own a tie collection with every combination of lavender, lilac, and slate grey stripes you can think of but this is city living, who doesn’t?
Fi. You got five feet into the Biergarten and stopped moving.
...you try monologuing and walking at the same time, Oz.
My informant in the Knights was called Kaeya. Easy man to find in the evening, if you knew where to find a heavy drinker, which as I mentioned before, I do. He was fleecing a fellow Knight at cards, and I waited til the game had wrapped and the other guy was leaving before I made my way to his table.
“Evening, Kaeya.” I drew myself a chair and motioned to his winnings. “Is that a stack of Mora, or are you just—”
He cut me off. “No. No, we’re not—” He lowered his voice. “Fischl, level with me: do you actually know what that saying means?”
“Does a dead cat bounce?” I quipped wittily.
“Don’t dodge the question.”
He looked serious, so I figured I’d throw him a bone. I gave him the simple yes-or-no answer he was clearly angling for. He asked me how many books I’d read where people say things like that without knowing what they mean; I explained to him that a hard boiled investigator doesn’t have much time for leisure reading, but Amy used to read a lot of detective novels and she had mentioned the answer was ‘none’. He told me that as a condition of being my informant, I was never to use those kinds of lines on him. I acquiesced and asked if I could have a sip of his ale; he said no.
“So, how can I help you?” said Kaeya, leaning back into his seat.
“It’s about one of your perps,” I said. “Razor. As in razor’s edge, where we’re all dancing.”
“Ah, the wolf boy? Yes, he was brought in this morning. Broad daylight robbery, allegedly. Half the vendors in the town square were willing to say they saw him pickpocket a fancy bracelet off of Miss Lyra but there was no sign of it, on him or anywhere else.”
Robbery? And a mystery to solve, by the sounds of it.
Sounds right up your alley, Fi.
Just what I was thinking, Oz.
I said, “No hard evidence, huh? Where do they think he stashed the goods?”
“That’s the thing.” (I want to say Kaeya frowned, because it gets the sentiment across, but actually his smile widened.) “There were Knights nearby. Razor was arrested on the spot. He wouldn’t have had time to stash it.”
Probably innocent, I reckoned. That was a relief, it would be a sad and short tale if Benny’s friend was guilty. But I couldn’t just declare he was innocent based on story logic, that’s not how being a private investigator works. There’s a process.
“So, assuming he did it,” I said, all nice and procedural, “either he passed it to an accomplice in the Knights... or it’s still on him.”
“We searched him. He’s clean. What does that say to you, Detective Fischl?”
(Oh, Kaeya, using my full name even though we’re old buds. The guy was such a stickler for niceties and procedures. A little too straight-laced to survive in the messy real world, where I lived.)
“He’s innocent, he had an accomplice in the knights... oh, or he could’ve swallowed it,” I suggested.
“Our Chief Investigator did some very fancy alchemy to check. He said there was zero presence of pearls anywhere on—or in—Razor’s person.”
“...he could have swallowed it and the pearls were fake?”
Kaeya sipped on his ale. “Come on, Fischl, we both know you think he’s innocent.”
“Yeah, but I gotta...”—what was the Solved! Master Detective Sango catchphrase again?... ah, yes—“...eliminate the alternatives so that the solution remains. Or something.”
Kaeya raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? That’s not how I recall you usually working.”
I shrugged, casually as I could. “It’s the way a P.I. is supposed to operate.”
“Hmm.”
“So, um. Benny says he wasn’t able to see the perp.”
“They wouldn’t let Bennett see Razor?” Now Kaeya frowned. “He’s not in maximum security. The holding cell visitor hours last all day.”
“I know, but Benny says he tried and it was like punching a stone wall. The guards on duty told him to scram.”
“Well, that’s interesting,” said Kaeya, eye narrowed. “I know some of the Knights don’t like pulling Bennett out of trouble, or how Varka dotes on Razor, but I didn’t realise those opinions were... interfering with their duties.”
“Can you get us in tonight? I know visiting hours are over, but...”
“If Bennett was denied his visit, that’s quite unfair,” said Kaeya. “I’ll go see who’s on front desk duty today. Whoever it is, I think I can... persuade them to be a little less petty to Bennett and Razor. And make you an exception for tonight.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Give me an hour and I’ll have you set up.”
He got up to leave.
“Oh, and P.I. Fischl?” he said, as he put his coat back on. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t, now.”
Since we had time to kill, we headed to the upper end of town to get started on the investigations.
The woman Razor had supposedly robbed was a bard named Lyra. We found her leaving the Cathedral. She had a soft face, the kind anyone’s folks would take a liking to if you brought her home for dinner. Her hair was a faded-red-wallpaper sort of colour, and her eyes were like berry jam.
“The boy who took my bracelet?” she said. “I hope the Knights go easy on him. He’s just a kid, at the end of the day... No offence.”
“None taken,” I said.
“It’s just... It’s not like him to steal things,” said Benny. “His ways are a bit different to ours but... I’ve never seen him so much as dig up a carrot from someone’s garden, let alone your bracelet.”
Lyra hummed sadly. “I believe you mean that. And honestly, maybe you’re right, that he’s not the sort to rob people usually. Whatever impulse drove him to do it... well, I really do hope he’s alright.”
“And you’ve no doubt it was him?”
Lyra nodded. She sighed, “I’m afraid so. One moment I’m walking through the market plaza, and the next he crashes into me, knocks me right over. I didn’t see how he snatched the bracelet off of me, but by the time he was helping me up I realised it was gone... and yes, before you ask, I’m sure it was on me moments before. It’s not actually my bracelet, I was on my way to return it, so I was very aware of where it was.”
“He helped you up?” I said. “Not much of a snatch’n’grab, huh.”
“It baffles me, too. He even helped me pick up my groceries from the ground.” Lyra’s brow furrowed. “I can’t imagine what drove him to do it... he did seem like a nice boy.”
We’d have to check with the other witnesses later, but according to Kaeya there hadn’t been anyone else close by enough to have done the deed; that was why they were so insistent on bringing Razor in as a suspect.
“It’s not your bracelet?” said Benny.
That part wasn’t a surprise to me. She dressed nicely enough but not pearls levels of fancy. A young bard wouldn’t be making that kind of money too easily.
“That’s right,” Lyra said. “My friend Margaret—she runs the Cat’s Tail—lent it to me for an audition last night. Well, audition isn’t quite the word... meeting with a potential patron, technically. It’s a long shot with these kinds of things, but... dress to impress, right?”
“Dress to impress,” I agreed.
I shifted my posture so she could see my slacks were freshly pressed. Then I pulled out a fresh stick of violet licorice and took a long drag on it.
“Who was this potential patron?” I asked.
Lyra named some Gunnhildr branch cousin—three or four times removed from ol’ Freddie and Jean, just important enough for the Guild to have a perfunctory dossier on them but hardly a mover and shaker. Still well off enough that their patronage would leave someone nicely set up with creature comforts.
I asked her when she’d last seen the bracelet for sure.
“Leaving my flat this morning— wait, no, at Blanche’s general store.” Lyra looked a little embarrassed. “I wanted Blanche to see how nice it looked before I went and returned it. It’s not the kind of thing we get to just see every day.”
“Did you let her hold it?”
“Never left my wrist. I was so paranoid, leaving the house. Put it on, constantly checking it was still there. I mean... Barbatos above, it was worth one, two million Mora, easily. Blanche saw it but it stayed on.”
“Which wrist?”
“Left.”
“Where’d you go once you left Blanche’s store?”
“Headed straight for the Cat’s Tail. I was supposed to meet with Margaret there. Then...”
I nodded. “You crashed into Razor.”
“Yeah.” Lyra’s expression grew pensive. “The boy was moving fast. Knocked me over, my groceries went everywhere...”
“Did you see him take the bracelet?” Benny interjected.
“Let her go at her own pace,” I chided him, like a mother hen telling her little chick off for witness tampering.
“I didn’t,” said Lyra, with a shake of her head. “I started picking up my vegetables, trying to keep them from getting trampled, and after... maybe five or ten seconds, I thought to check for the bracelet. It was gone.”
“Like childhood innocence after a bloodbath,” I said gravely.
Lyra looked at me quizzically, but I figured the simile was self-explanatory, so I didn’t say anything.
After a second, the bard continued:
“I called for help, and... well, after that point the Knights probably know better than me what happened. I explained about the pearls, the Knights held up anyone in the vicinity, patted everyone down... but they honed in on that wolf boy—”
“Razor,” said Benny.
“—on Razor pretty fast.”
“No chance it could have fallen into your groceries or anything?” I said.
“No. I turned out my pockets; the Knights helped me check everything I was carrying—nothing.”
“Then... you really think Razor did it?” said Benny. He sounded a little down, understandably enough.
Lyra sighed. “Honestly? I have no idea. If the Knights suspect him they must have their reasons. But... I’ve seen Razor around before. He always seemed like such a gentle boy...”
She fell quiet, a thoughtful look on her face.
“Maybe he...” Lyra shook her head. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t understand personal property?”
Benny glared. “Hey, Razor isn’t some animal...”
“Easy does it, Benny,” I said, holding out a warning hand. “Lyra, just to be sure, you didn’t see anyone else suspicious around the scene?”
Lyra shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’d love for it not to be your friend, but... I don’t know what else to tell you.”
And that was that. We said our goodbyes and graces, and Lyra went on her merry way.
I looked to Benny. He was in the shade: at this time of evening, the big pillars around the Cathedral plaza cast a shadow longer and darker than any bitter memory, and that shadow shaded him like an, um, an umbra.
Poor kid looked a bit mopey, and I didn’t think it was just the shadow metaphor that was responsible.
“Feeling down?” I asked him.
Benny nodded. “Yeah,” he said after a bit, “I just... I dunno what to think, now. Razor wouldn’t... I mean, he wouldn’t have, right?”
I ruffled his hair a little.
“I don’t like her,” I said.
Benny looked confused so I jerked my head in the direction Lyra had left.
“Miss Lyra?” he said. “Why? She seemed nice.”
“Yeah,” I said, “that’s the problem.” I adjusted my hair as I dispensed wisdom at him. “Too nice. Cared for Razor’s welfare. Heart of gold. Do you know how often the perp turns out to be the harmless sweetie nobody looks twice at?” It was a rhetorical question. “Way too often.”
“So we’re... gonna investigate her, then?”
I scoffed. “Are ya kidding me? Of course not. A proper investigator doesn’t go chasing every wild hunch she comes across.”
“No...?” said Benny.
“No,” I said. “There’s gotta be a proper logic and method to the investigation, or nobody will take you seriously. A good investigator has to have a... what’s the word?...”
Methodology.
“...methodology,” I said. (I’d just been testing Oz. As if I’d forget that word.)
“Oh, okay,” said Benny, scratching his head. “I... didn’t realise you cared that much about being taken seriously.”
The hell was that supposed to mean?
“The hell is that supposed to mean?” I demanded of him.
“Um...” Benny’s eyes widened, now apparently realising that he’d faux pas’d harder than a Ruin Guard in a pawn shop. “Oh my gosh, that was really rude of me, I’m sorry—”
“Oh, you’re sorry, are you,” I said.
Leave it, Fi.
Nah. A woman has pride, Oz.
I glared daggers at Benny. “What, because I talk too plain, and say what I mean, that means I’m not serious? Is that it?”
“No, um, please, never mind...”
This time I caught the twitch of Benny’s eyes as he looked me up and down.
Oh, the bastard. “Oh, I see. It’s the getup, isn’t it?”
“No, I...” he said, but his face told the whole story.
“You think because of how I dress, I don’t care what other people think of me, is that it?”
“...yeah?”
“Well, number one, I can’t help it if my outfit is a bit lacking. My salary doesn’t stretch to cover a nice fedora, so excuse me if I’m not dressed all proper.” (A bit of a lie. I owned a couple of good hats but none of them matched this suit.) “And number two? You’re right, I don’t care what other people think.”
Benny gulped. “Um, okay. Got it.”
“Now, scram. Go take a walk around the block, kid.” I folded my arms all serious-like. “You’ve gone and got me all riled up, and I need to cool down if we’re cracking this case.”
Benny did as he was told and scampered off on a walk.
While he did that, I sat on a bench in the Cathedral plaza, trying to find my cool.
The gent wasn’t entirely wrong. For the most part, I didn’t give a toss what people thought of me so long as it didn’t interfere with my booze money. (Wolfhook juice money, technically, but that doesn’t roll off the tongue quite the same.) He was out of line but he wasn’t firing blanks when he asked why I’d care about doing a proper investigation by the books.
Thing was, even if I’m too hard-boiled to care about making sense to mundane minds, well, Amy? Amy would’ve wanted me to be understood.
See, Amy was all about books, and a book puts you right inside the characters’ heads, even closer than a slug to the grey matter. So of course she was all “insight” this, “mortifying ordeal of being seen” that.
Me, personally? I’m a practical woman. I live in the real world, where people never give you the full story. The perp who feeds bread to the poor turns out to be a stone cold killer, like in The Snezhnayan Songbird. The adventuring socialites tell their darling diva never to surrender her class and her dreams, only to turn around and scorn her hard-earned graces as ‘childish’, ‘make-believe’. The details may change, but always, always, folks are like red onions: layers upon layers of deception, and you’ll sooner end up in bloody tears than reach the centre of the puzzle.
Screw it. Do you want to know the kicker?
The night Amy died she was having a spat with her folks. Because they didn’t understand her, not really, not the way you understand a book character like a butterfly dissected on the alchemy table. And that’s how her last night in this world went: the poor girl, frustrated and alone.
Oh, Amy, you archons-damned bleeding heart angel. Burying you was the foulest thing I’ve ever had to do.
Hey Fi, my wings are tired. Mind if I borrow your shoulder, partner?
Sure, sure. But don’t think I don’t see through you, Oz. You’re made of pure Electro, you don’t get tired. You just feel like being pet.
...you got me, Fi; I’m the one who needs a hug here.
He alighted on my forearm and I ran my fingers across his back.
Felt nice.
I took another drag of my licorice, gathering my thoughts.
“Amy liked her characters nice and comprehensible,” I said aloud.
Oz retorted, also aloud: “You’re really calling Mister Nine’s character bios ‘comprehensible’?”
I rolled my eyes. “Not the backstories, Oz, the characters. What makes them tick. Who you can count on.”
“She got into detective fiction, too. Aren’t those stories full of lies?”
Yeah, but, lies you can see. Lies they explain to you after.
I was interrupted in my thoughts by the clack of stilettos across the Cathedral plaza.
I looked up and had to suppress a smile when I recognised the beetroot juice hair and the thorny crown.
“Sister Rosie,” I drawled, cool as a chilled cucumber.
“Fish Eel,” the woman replied. She was playing with a knife in her hand, spinning it around by a hole at the base of its handle. “Nice tie. And Ozzy. Looking sharp.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Not my best repartee, but I might’ve been a little tongue tied. Rosie was really gods-damned cool.
“You... doing the rounds?”
Rosie nodded. She whirled the knife around her finger a few times, looking bored.
You know how in hard-boiled detective fiction they always have a nobody-special protagonist, some everyday hero just trying to get by in a city that’s ugly and anonymous once you scratch the surface, but they’re used to the muck and they can damned well get by in it? Like me? Well, Rosie was that, too.
The first time I’d met her, Amy and I were fourteen, and we were coming home from the library: Amy was at the height of her hard-boiled detective fiction phase, having run out of gothic fantasy books worth their weight in guano. Rosie was in a laneway, beating up some purse snatcher by moonlight. A spin of the spear, maiming not killing, then a reliable one-two punch to the gut sent the purse snatcher sprawling, and Rosie pinned her down til the Knights showed.
The victim called her a hero, and she said, quote, “Me? I’m just another ordinary person, doing what I have to do”, and I fell in love instantly.
(Honestly if I hadn’t gotten to know her before Amy’d bit the bullet, I might not have gone into the private investigator life. Amy, bless her, had always thought I should live like my namesake, dealing with the gothic and fantastical, and I admit I was tempted for a time. But Rosie is like, everything a noir protagonist should be. Bloody backstory too, best as my digging around could tell me. She was proof it was possible to be harder boiled than a twenty minute egg, even here in Mondstadt, and, well, the rest is history.)
“I saw you’re on a play date with Benter,” said Rosie nonchalantly. (She said almost everything nonchalantly.)
“Not a play date,” I corrected her, “I’m on a case. Benny’s the client.”
“Fizelle. Listen. You know that boy is bad luck to get close to, don’t you?”
I laughed. “What are you, my old lady? I can take care of myself, and I’m too jaded for some scantily-clad blond to get me dropping my guard.”
Rosie ruffled my hair—which, if anyone was allowed to do that, it was her, but ugh I was not a kid, I was a jaded wisecracking detective—she ruffled my hair and said, “Yeah, I know you can look out for yourself, kid. Just... whatever trouble he’s in, there’s always more. He always finds a way to get back in trouble the next day, and it’s never quite his fault. Don’t get too attached to the idea of rescuing him or it’ll never end.”
“Ah. Less homme fatale, more...”
“...more sad little puppy,” said Rosie, “that you’ve gotta walk past eventually.”
Okay, yeah. I could believe that.
“I’ll be careful,” I said, meaning it. “You’ll be glad to know the case isn’t about Benny, not really. He’s got a friend in a jam, that’s all.”
I tilted my head toward her, careful to play it cool.
“We’re headed to see the friend now. Want to come with?”
Rosaria’s lips twitched in an approximation of a kind smile. “Thanks for the offer, but nah, I try to keep to the high ground.”
“If I may ask a favour, then?” said Oz.
“Ehh, try me.”
“The bard we were talking to just now, Lyra. Could you look into her? Let us know if there’s anything suspicious about her?”
The hell, Oz, chasing my hunch!? What happened to old-fashioned deduction?
Fi, your hunches are excellent. You like chasing down your hunches.
Amy got annoyed by books where the detective pulled the solution out of thin air. Said it was embarrassing, made it hard to explain the plot twists to people, left the reader feeling cheated.
Amy’s gone, Fi. You don’t owe her anything.
The saying is ‘don’t owe her nothing’, Oz, show a little class, will ya?
Rosie wasn’t privy to the back and forth, so she interrupted us by saying, “Yeah, sure, I’ll keep an eye out.”
“Thanks, Rosaria,” said Oz.
Ugh, fine. “Yeah, thanks Rosie,” I said. “Don’t go out of your way for it though. No logical reason she’s crooked.”
“I don’t go out of my way for anything,” Rosie said. She glanced behind me. “Aha. Your... request giver...”—(“Client?” I said.)—“...yeah. Your client’s back. I should get back to patrol.”
I nodded. Amy would’ve stood up to wave her goodbye, but I understood the importance of nonchalance, so I doffed an imaginary hat to Rosie instead.
“Stay safe,” I said.
“Good luck, kid,” Rosie said, and strode off.
Sure enough, I heard Benny approaching soon after. He had finished his circle of the Cathedral. He looked at me questioningly, and I beckoned him over.
“Who’s the bird?” Benny said, once he was close by.
“Rosie’s a sister in the Church,” I said. “A fellow grifter on these grimy streets, if you will.”
Benny blinked, then shook his head. “Oh, no, I know Sister Rosaria! She’s gotten me out of a few scrapes. No, I meant, um...”
He gestured at me, which told me nothing. I had to follow his gaze to see who he meant.
“Oh, Oz?” I said. “He’s my partner in crime. Only we don’t do no crimes: we solve them.”
“Greetings, Master Bennett,” said Oz, nodding to Benny. “I’m Oz, Fi’s... ‘eye in the sky’.”
“Um...” Benny seemed hesitant but asked his next question anyway. “How does he talk?— wait, sorry, is that rude? Um, where do you two know each other from?”
How much are we telling him?
Nothing yet. For all we know, he’s the culprit.
Fi, he’s not the gods damned culprit.
Yeah, fair, that’d be a plot hole and a half.
“It’s a tragic backstory thing,” I said.
I stood up, brushing dust off my slacks much like I’d brushed off Benny’s question: not thoroughly, but well enough for now.
“Alright,” I said. “It’s been a while and a half, plenty of time for our inside man to lay out a welcome mat. Let’s go see what your beau can do to help us crack this egg of a case into its omelette pan.”
“Um,” said Benny, “what?”
“What Fi means,” said Oz, “is that Sir Kaeya ought to be done by now. So we should go talk to your friend Razor and see what he knows.”