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Diluc Ragnvindr was a man who reserved most of his hatred for only the most detestable of things. He hated the illusion of compromise with evil, and how readily the justest of hearts fell for the ruse. He hated corruption and indifference, those twin nutrients that allowed all those most fetid things in this world to thrive. He hated warlust and ideology and everything that fomented conflict, pitting brother against brother. He hated the smell of burning flesh.
And—his one concession to irrationality—he hated the smell of wine.
In the months since he’d returned to Dawn Winery, Diluc had discovered that the family estate was permeated with the smell. He couldn’t step foot inside the house without being hit with a bouquet of scents a thousand vintages deep. Every room had a different combination of notes: some rooms oak, some cedar; some rooms blackberries, some lampgrass; some rooms pear, some lemon. All of them were, to his trained nose, delectable; all of them smelled of blood on his hands.
Masking that smell was, accordingly, half the reason there was a pitcher of fizzy mint-berry juice on his desk right now. The other half was that it was late in the afternoon, Adelinde thought he could use the sweetness of the berries to wake him, and yes, it tasted really good so he had no reason to refuse.
(Really, though. One offhand comment about the wine smell a few months ago, and Adelinde had been shoving sodas and hot cocoas under his nose ever since. Not that he wasn’t grateful for the distracting scents, but did she have to be so cheery about it?)
Diluc was halfway through a rather dry report on upcoming changes to customs and duties at the Fontaine-Liyue border when there was a knock at the study door.
“Yes?” he said.
Adelinde stuck her head in, all smiles as usual. “A guest just passed the gates. You weren’t expecting anyone, were you?”
“I was not.”
“You didn’t kill anyone last night without telling me, did you?”
“No, I did not.” Diluc rubbed his temples and glanced at the clock—a quarter past four, not entirely unreasonable for a business call. “Just the one?”
“Just the one. They’ll be at the door any minute. Shall I...?”
Diluc looked back at the report. He shook his head and sighed. “Let’s see what they want.”
By the time Diluc made it to the atrium, Elzer was at the door, talking with the guest— no, guests plural, going by the voices: one male and one female.
“The Master may be able to spare a few minutes,” Elzer was saying, “but if you need to conduct a proper interview I’d suggest you make an appointment.”
“Just a few choice questions and we’ll be out of his hair faster than a faulty bobby pin,” said the female. “The kind that never closed properly to begin with, like, those really cheap ones from market stalls.”
“My associate and I will endeavour to be brief,” said the male.
“If I may,” said Diluc, joining Elzer at the door.
He looked the pair up and down.
The woman was— no, not a woman, a girl in her late teens at the most. The girl was blonde, green-eyed; the jacket of her two piece suit (charcoal with lilac pinstripes) was well tailored but the pants were slightly loose at the hips, held in place by a cowhide belt in deep plum. She had a half eaten stick of violet licorice in her mouth. The overall effect rather reminded Diluc of a detective from one of those risible novels that were so popular in Fontaine... only a lot more purple.
By process of elimination, that meant the baritone voice belonged to the bird—a raven, maybe?—hovering in the air beside the girl. (Could birds fly in place like that? Nevermind, he was clearly an Electro construct or spirit or something of the sort, not a flesh-feathers-and-blood bird.)
“Diluc Ragnvindr. And you are...?”
The girl cleared her throat. “The name’s Fischl V.L. Narfidort, private eye. That’s short for private investigator, which I am. My associate here’s named Oz.”
“To clarify,” said Oz, “we work for the Adventurers Guild.”
“Hey— well, it’s a little more complicated than that. The Guild pays my paychecks, sure, but it’s not like I work for them full time.”
“Despite your best efforts.”
Before the two could start bickering, Diluc cut in.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked.
“Ooh. Classic line. Fact of the matter is, we’re here investigating some suspicious activity around Mondstadt, and we’ve got a few questions for you, Mister Ragnvindr.”
“I’m afraid I’m rather busy, but since you’ve come all this way... I can spare a little time.” Diluc motioned. “Please, come in. Elzer, show our guests to the sitting room.”
The guests were ushered in.
As Diluc turned to follow them in, Adelinde caught him by the arm. He hadn’t even heard her approaching.
“Master Diluc, please do up your shirt,” she chided. “One top button undone is rakish; two is slovenly.”
She stepped in closer to fix his buttons and—after a moment’s consideration—retie his ascot. As she did, she murmured to him:
“Formerly Amy Braun, only daughter of the adventurer couple of that name. Guild Intelligence department, eighteen months now, eccentric but considered one of their best investigators.”
Diluc suppressed a grimace. “The Adventurers Guild.” The international organisation didn’t report to Sandrone per se—Diluc wasn’t certain the local branch masters were even aware of the connection—but its files always seemed to end up in her hands, one way or another. “Personality?”
“She keeps up the detective persona at all hours,” said Adelinde, crimping Diluc’s shirt collar. “Beneath that... I don’t know for sure. Electro Vision, so probably a little stubborn, an honour code.”
She stepped back and patted him on the shoulder.
“There, all done,” she said, more loudly.
Diluc angled his head to avoid his maid’s self-satisfied smirk.
He made his way into the sitting room, where his guests were talking animatedly.
“You can’t just say the maid ‘did it’ if there has been no crime to speak of.”
“But look at her! She’s textbook femme fatale, minus the outfit! She’d kill your kids and feed them to you in a pie, and she’d be smiling the whole time. Mark my words, Oz, if a murder happens here, she did it.”
“Fi, those serial killer novels are rotting your brain.” Oz looked up. “Ah, Master Diluc.”
“Mister Oz. Miss Fischl.” Diluc took a seat opposite them. “I’m told you’re a respected investigator, ma’am. How may I be of assistance?”
“Before we get to that,” said Fischl, “may I trouble you for a drink? Only it’s been a long walk here...”
“We’re really doing this, Fi?” said Oz with clear exasperation.
“Oh, it’s no trouble at all,” said Diluc. “Water? Or something else?”
“Oh, let’s share a bottle of something. Whatever you feel like.”
“My partner Fi turned sixteen a few months ago. And, nothing for me, thank you.”
Old enough for wine, then, but if she thought Diluc would be drinking alcohol, she thought wrong.
“Adelinde, the sparkling rose grape juice,” Diluc said. “This year’s vintage, if you please.”
Adelinde curtseyed. “Shall I get the nice glassware?”
Barbatos above, no, this was a kid; he didn’t need a kid drugged and tortured, what the hell, Adelinde?
“No, just whatever’s nearby,” said Diluc, giving Adelinde the best “we will be discussing this later” look he could get away with in front of company.
“Of course, Master.”
Once she’d bustled off, humming to herself, Diluc turned back to his guests. “Now, where were we?”
“Establishing backstory, I believe,” said Fischl. “You’ve been gone from Mondstadt for quite a few years. What were you up to?”
“Nothing you’d find interesting. I was just travelling.”
“An extended vacation, then?”
“Ha. Sure, you might call it that. Miss Fischl, do you have something specific you want to ask?”
“Ah, yeah, we can lead with the case. Exposition is exposition.” Fischl leaned back in her chair. “Mister Ragnvindr, where were you between two and three a.m. last Friday?”
Ah, of course. He’d pushed a man down a flight of stairs that morning. Not entirely surprising that the Guild was looking into it where the Knights seemingly weren’t: after all, it wasn’t the latter that the deceased had been a regular customer of.
“Asleep in my bedroom, I’d imagine,” Diluc said.
“Hmm. Any witnesses who can corroborate?”
“Poking into my private life?”
“I couldn’t care less about your private life. Well, I probably could, but I’m sure you know the idiom. No, Mister Ragnvindr, no prurient interest here. Just trying to establish your alibi, prove your innocence.”
“Innocence of what?”
“George Weber, accountant, early thirties. Took a nasty fall that morning on his way home from Angel’s Share.” Fischl paused. “Then died.”
“Because of the fall?” Diluc inquired.
Nod. “Because of the fall. Now, what do you know about Angel’s Share?”
“A fair bit. It is the Dawn Winery’s bar.”
“Exactly. And guess who owns the Dawn— ooh, thank you kindly.”
Adelinde had reappeared with a pair of tumblers and the sparkling grape juice Diluc had asked for. To the side of the tray she’d arranged some tomato crisps and sliced camembert. She set to pouring.
“It’s my bar, yes,” said Diluc, nodding his thanks as Adelinde slid one glass to him. “On Thursday I was there supervising until early evening. I don’t recall a customer by that name but he may well have been there. I returned to the Winery for dinner.”
“Roast duck, I recall,” said Adelinde.
She’d been snippy that Diluc hadn’t made it back in time for dinner—the opportunity for the kill had arisen quite suddenly—pouting that she hadn’t plucked and disemboweled it herself just to have the best bits go cold while she waited for him to show.
“Ah, and what time was dinner that evening?”
“Half past nine,” Adelinde told Fischl. “It takes a while for him to get here from the city.”
“Thank you,” said Fischl. “I might have more questions for you later, Miss...?”
“Adelinde. And, of course!, just ask for me. For now, I’ll leave you all to it.”
She closed the door behind her.
“I must ask,” said Diluc, “if I’m a suspect in a murder investigation, why is it you questioning me and not the Knights?”
Fischl’s eyes narrowed. “Murder? I never said anything about murder.”
“Fi, you implied it rather strongly,” said Oz.
“Oh. Well, Mister Ragnvindr, the reason’s simple. This isn’t a murder investigation. That’s for the Knights to decide, and they didn’t see anything suspicious about Weber’s fall: just a drunk man tripping down some steps on a rainy night.”
“So why are you here?”
“Ask me what line of business I’m in, Mister Ragnvindr.”
Diluc raised an eyebrow. “What line of—”
“Too slow. I’m in the intelligence business, sir. I go digging for truths, hard truths. Not because I’m paid for it, though I am, but because all civilisation is a stinking cesspit of canards and calumnies and more often than not, the cold, hard truth is exactly the salve we all need to keep trudging along.”
Dear gods, she really did talk like a detective from a bad novel.
“And what truth are you looking for here, Miss Fischl?” said Diluc.
He took a sip of the sparkling grape juice. Not bad. A good balance of candy-sweet and bitter-tart.
“Katheryne asked me to write a report on our client’s death. My gut told me there was more to this case than meets the eye.”
“Fi’s gut is very reliable,” added Oz.
“It’s not. Just thinking about roast duck made me queasy... Oh! Right. I meant, yeah, the ol’ gut intuition has never served me wrong.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with me. I wasn’t even in Mondstadt City at the time.”
“We’re getting to that. This juice is excellent, by the way.”
“I’m glad you like it. Our grape juices are a favourite of mine.”
“You don’t drink alcohol much?”
Diluc shook his head. “Not nowadays.”
“Intriguing. I sense a gritty backstory... But we digress.
“Now, I went digging for info on this George Weber character. Upstanding citizen. Went to church twice a week, paid his taxes on time, and did good, solid work keeping the books for a bunch of merchants on the north side of town. Even fed Timmie’s pigeons once in a while.”
“A man with few enemies, then,” said Diluc.
Fischl nodded. “No conceivable motive. And yet the way he landed from that fall looked wrong to me. A little too much forward momentum, if you get my drift. So I had a peek at the Knights’s incident report, and...”
“Really?” said Diluc, genuinely intrigued. That information was more confidential than the Guild was supposed to have access to. “And how did you get ahold of that?”
“A lady never tells,” said Fischl. “And I’m no lady.”
She grinned and took a few more sips of grape juice.
“But if you must know...” she went on.
“He doesn’t have to know.”
“Not technically, but...”
“Fi. He’s literally your main suspect.”
“Oh, come on, what’s even the point of having secret informants if you can’t show off once in a while?”
Diluc looked back and forth between the two of them. “I apologise for interrupting. You were speaking about the incident report; please, continue.”
“Right. So the incident report was useless. No evidence taken, just one Kamera photo of the victim and that was it.”
“That would be the Knights for you.”
“Damn right. More useless than a wet noodle in a swordfight. Anyway, so, this Weber character, fascinating thing: I went to check out his place. Do you know what I found?”
Nothing, Diluc guessed.
“What did you find?” he said.
“Nothing. No boxes filled with letters from some secret paramour, no ancient gold coins. But not even that: his flat was boring. No pictures up, no cute little wall hangings or anything. No snacks in the pantry, just the bare minimum. The bookshelf had three books in it, and all of them were about tax accounting or something else like that.”
“A man who didn’t spend much time at home, then.”
“A man with no personality, Mister Ragnvindr. And ain’t that just unusual?”
“I suppose it is.”
If anything, it was a little sloppy on Weber’s part. Diluc had seen better.
Fischl topped up her juice. “Now, my dead twin Amy—”
“Half-sister.”
“Twin.”
“You told Bennett and Razor she was your half-sister.”
“Right. Whatever. My... sister, Amy, who’s dead, that’s the important part: she liked to read a lot of books, you see. Not accounting books, but fiction, because Amy was a dreamer, too innocent for this hard, cruel world. And so this whole thing with the dead fellow with no personal life, well liked, private man... well, that really got me thinking of some of her mystery thriller novels.”
Fischl met Diluc’s eyes and added:
“Spy novels, in particular.”
“Is that so?” said Diluc casually.
“Yeah, see, an undercover agent has gotta keep their head low, you know? Act as normal as possible, don’t do nothing to get in trouble, and be, well, boring. And that’s exactly what our victim was like.
“So say Weber was a spy. For who? For what? Let’s put that aside for now. More pertinent to this investigation is the question of, who would want him dead? And how did they find him out?
“Now, I asked around a bit, seeing if anyone knew about any changes in his routine, anything that might have given this guy away. Nope, nothing. World’s most boring schedule. Goes in to work, goes home, blah blah blah. Except for one thing. Crystal shrimp dumplings.”
“Crystal shrimp dumplings?”
“You heard me. There’s a dumpling stand down near the fishmongers. According to his colleagues, George Weber went there every Friday for lunch, ordered the crystal shrimp dumplings. Only, get this: he only started going there last year.”
“...I don’t follow,” said Diluc.
Gods above, it had taken his northern friends months to pinpoint the dumpling stand. And this child had just lucked her way into figuring it out?
“Well, it turns out the month he started going there, the dumpling stand hired a new assistant. Qianti Long, recent immigrant, that’s not important right now. What’s important is... what if this was part of Weber’s spy business somehow? A dead drop, or a meeting point, or something.”
She really had. Diluc suppressed a sigh. Vision holders were something else, sometimes.
“That seems... far-fetched,” he said.
“Oh, it gets even more unbelievable.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“There’s no stopping her,” Oz told him. “Fi loves her solution reveal monologues.”
“You still haven’t explained what this has to do with me,” Diluc said.
“Well,” Fischl said, “to unpack that can of worms, first we need to open the crate it’s in.”
“Fi promises to hurry up.”
“Oz! Ahem. Okay, so this next part’s entirely luck, okay? Just bear with me.”
“Bearing with you.”
“So the day before yesterday, I was chatting with one of my Knights contacts, the Investigation Captain. Quiet fellow, we’ve helped each other out a few times. We were talking about the Knights Charity Ball, dress code and getting it cancelled and what not, when the conversation shifts to my case. I explained my dumpling stall theory to him, and obviously he was impressed, but also he mentioned he’d been by there a month ago.”
Fischl set her tumbler down on the table. She rose and stood at the window, giving Diluc a meaningful look.
“...dare I ask why?” said Diluc.
Fischl beamed. “If you insist. So he told me he’s been redoing background checks on some of the Knights, ones who were hired a little too fast when the corrupt guy was around.”
“Eroch?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.” Fischl stared out the window. “Hey, are those real grape vines?”
“Yes, Miss Fischl, they are.”
“Hey, Oz, check this out. Ain’t it something?”
“You were saying something about a background check?”
“Oh, yeah.” Fischl crossed her arms, looking out at the vineyard, her back still to Diluc. (He was fairly sure he’d seen that exact pose on the cover of a few detective novels.) “So he was keeping tabs on a few of the Knights, and one of them went well out of her way to that very same dumpling stand, once every couple of weeks. He tailed her there, watched her get her order and leave, didn’t see anything suspicious.”
“But it was the same stall, you say?” said Diluc.
“Exactly. Now—oh, actually, we can do a dramatic reveal. Okay, I’m going to say something, and then you’re gonna ask me why, and then I’m gonna turn around and dramatically reveal something. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Ah, to be young again. Diluc allowed himself a small smile. (Neither Fischl nor Oz were looking, and the glare of the sun meant they wouldn’t see it in the window either.)
“So I asked the Investigation Captain who this suspect was, and he tells me that, listen, he can’t just tell me who’s subject to what internal investigations... but he said he’d make an exception this once.”
Fischl motioned behind her back.
“Why?” said Diluc, on cue.
“Because,” said Fischl, and she turned around, her face half in shadow, eyes sharp like knives, “the Knight in question, Sir Irene Eisdorf, eighth company... is dead. Got her head caved in during a skirmish with Hilichurls barely a week later.” She rubbed her chin. “Now, ain’t that an odd coincidence?”
“Unusual indeed,” agreed Diluc.
“A masterful dramatic reveal, Fi,” said Oz.
It had been child’s play to agitate the Hilichurls without being seen, thanks to the ample cover in the Whispering Woods. Likewise, separating the woman from her squad in the middle of the fight. The tricky part had been returning the club to the Hilichurl he’d “borrowed” it from; he’d had to trip it over a second time in the chaos of the skirmish.
Fi went on: “So at this point, I figured I had a spy killer on my hands, metaphorically of course. Maybe a lone vigilante, maybe a rival organisation; either way, a shadow war playing out in the streets of Mondstadt. My streets.
“Now, a sensible detective would have left this to the Knights. Tell me, Mister Ragnvindr, do I strike you—”
“No.”
“Damn right I’m not. I’m like a bloodhound. You won’t find nothing throwing me off the scent, no sir. And this is where we get to you, Mister Ragnvindr. Because what else has changed in Mondstadt lately, besides these killings? That’s right, you came back after a long few years away.
“Now, what might a humble rich fellow such as you have to do with all this, you ask? Easy. You left Mondstadt around the time that Eroch fellow had his hooks as deep into the Knights as he ever would. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d assassinated your father, just for the tragic backstory...”
“I beg your pardon!?”
“...not important. Look, the point is, it looks like the Fatui may well have forced you out of town. And what are the Fatui if not a big, shady spy organisation? I don’t know, because they are.”
That... that felt like a leap too far. It was one thing for Fischl to have accidentally deduced the existence of the House of the Hearth cell he’d been busy stamping out. It was another thing entirely for her to assume he did it.
Diluc took another sip of juice, pondering.
“Miss Fischl,” he said, “this is something of a sensitive subject. I lost my father back then. You lost your... sister, wasn’t it? Surely you can understand.”
“Hmm... true,” she conceded.
“If I understand correctly, this sister, Amy, she wasn’t a detective?”
“Nope, just a regular kid. Kinda forgettable, honestly.”
“And how did she die?”
“Bittersweetly. In a library, surrounded by the books she loved so much.” Fi sighed. “I had to break the news to her folks myself. They didn’t believe me at first, but...” She motioned to her Vision. “...this here seemed to sell them on the story.”
Alright, then. She’d gotten a Vision and changed her name. Not the strangest thing a child had ever done.
Except the personality change. Now that was fascinating, wasn’t it?
“Ever spent time outside of Mondstadt?” he asked.
“Crossed Stone Gate on business once or twice. Why?”
“Ever spent time up in the north?”
Fischl gave him a considering look. “Can’t say I have.”
No. Diluc couldn’t let his paranoia get away from him. There was no way Arlecchino could have replaced an only child without her parents noticing. Not to mention, if the girl was a Snezhevna, she had no business revealing herself to him like this.
Fischl seemed to take the silence as her cue to carry on. “Anyway, that’s what it looks like. The Fatui drive you out of town, you go wandering off for a few years, looking for vengeance or retribution or whatever. You come back to town, somehow discover some Fatui living under the noses of the Knights, and then you go and off them. Is that right?”
“No,” said Diluc.
Fischl dropped back into her chair with a grin. “That’s what I thought,” she said delightedly.
Diluc blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s too simple to be true! Such a clear-cut motive, a man out for revenge, vigilante justice, it’s such a neat little story, all wrapped up in a bow.” Fischl gulped down her glass. “More, please? Thank you.”
“I’m not sure I follow...” said Diluc, and this time he actually meant it. He poured the last of the sparkling grape juice into Fischl’s glass.
“I’m so sorry about this,” sighed Oz.
“What I just said? That’s what you want me to believe. If the Knights went digging and got close to the truth, that’s what you’d hint to them: your grudge against the Fatui got a little out of hand, but you were protecting Mondstadt. Sir Varka would lap that right up. Sir Jean, not so much, but you two were childhood friends, and she’s pretty soft beneath all the airs and graces.”
“You think I... pretended to kill Fatui agents?”
“No, I think you pretended your motives are revenge. Because here’s the thing. If you’d found a spy network, wouldn’t you want to eavesdrop on it? Be a little more subtle with your sabotage?”
The thought had occurred to him, but he couldn’t stand the idea of Fatui scum lurking in his hometown any longer than necessary.
“Not that any of this is true,” said Diluc, “but if I was out for revenge, why assume I’d be patient about it?”
“It’s called an intuitive leap, buster. Sometimes the conclusion’s just far enough away from what you have that you have to take a nice, big, intuitive leap to get there.”
“You’re... jumping to conclusions?”
“No, I... huh. I guess that is what I said, isn’t it?” Fischl shrugged. “Look, not important. The fact is, your supposed hatred for the Fatui is a cover story. One concealing a deeper, darker truth.
“Because isn’t it funny that you’ve barely caught up with any of your old pals since returning to town? You’ve been here for a few months and as best as I can tell, you haven’t gone socialising with your Knights buddies. After years and years away! Why not? What don’t you want them to see?
“The answer was, of course, entirely elementary once I thought about it. Hear me out here.”
Fischl grinned manically.
“Diluc Ragnvindr is dead,” she said.
“What?” said Diluc, as Oz did a surprisingly good job of burying his head in one wing. “I’m sorry, what!?”
“You heard me. Disappearing for years, returning with a dark and broody personality that can be explained by your dark and broody past—you’re a plant. An impostor. Another spy from the same little deep cover spy factory that Weber and Eisdorf and Long came from... Wait, did I mention the dumpling assistant guy drowned the other day? Mister Long? Well, he did. Not that that’s news to you, is it?”
“You think I’m an undercover Fatuus,” said Diluc slowly, “who’s killing other undercover Fatui.”
“Damn right I do.”
He’d actually preferred when she was on to him. This was surreal, and he would take a tough interrogation over surrealism any day.
“That makes no sense at all.”
“Doesn’t it? Remember, those three, their little communication network, they were getting sloppy. Captain Albedo was onto one of them. And I found the other two in just a few days. If I could find it, someone else could, too. Which means...”
“They were liabilities. Yes,” he added, at Fischl’s raised eyebrows, “I read spy novels when I was young, too. I know the cliches.”
“So the Fatui send you to town, put you in a very powerful, very well connected position... and the first thing you do? Clean up their earlier messes. No loose ends. You’re a competent assassin—maybe you even killed the real Diluc yourself. Either way, you have the perfect sob story alibi. Even if the crime gets pinned on you, you know you’ll get off lightly.”
Diluc massaged his forehead. “I assure you, none of that is true.”
“Say whatever you want, ‘Ragnvindr’. You and I both know you’re stalling for time until the poison kicks in.
“Yeah, that’s right, I know about the poison you just fed me. A good assassin would keep a little spare on hand, just in case, and you had ample opportunity to slip it into my drink when I wasn’t looking. More opportunity when you refilled my glass just then. It’s a smart move, really—”
“I have not poisoned you,” said Diluc flatly.
“—since I mentioned earlier that I was pursuing this lead without the Knights. Nobody else would have a reason to suspect you. I even said nobody else knows I’m here besides Oz.”
“I don’t think you did,” said Oz tiredly.
“Well, it’s implicit,” said Fischl. “Anyway, good plan. Give me my comeuppance for walking into the falcon’s den, make it look like I went missing. Oz, you’d probably be able to take in a fight, if you picked your timing right.
“But you overlooked one thing, ‘Diluc Ragnvindr’.” Fischl leaned forward. “Do you want to know what that is?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“I’ll take that as a yes. What you overlooked is, I made contingency plans.”
Fischl smiled very, very widely.
“Sure, the poison in my drink will probably kill me in the next few minutes, but you know what I did? I left some letters with a few trusted friends. To be opened only if something happens to me. And guess what’s in those letters?
“Too stunned to respond? It’s okay. I would be too, if I were a crook. See, these letters have all my investigation details in them. The reveal that you’re a spy. And, yes, my plans to come visit you this afternoon.
“You see, ‘Diluc’, I was one step ahead of you all this time. You thought that killing me would be the end? You thought wrong. Your attempt to kill me will be your undoing.
“And that,” said Fischl, triumph flashing in her eyes, “is what we call dramatic irony.”
She and Diluc stared at one another.
“This is ridiculous,” Diluc said. “You haven’t been poisoned. The worst the grape juice will do is stain your teeth.”
“Come now,” said Fischl, “drop the act. There’s no point pretending any more.”
“I did not poison you.”
“Hmph. We’ll see about that.”
She crossed her arms, and Diluc said nothing because he couldn’t think of anything worth saying to such nonsense.
About three minutes later, Fischl spoke up again.
“You really didn’t poison me?”
“I really didn’t.”
“But you’re a Fatui spy!”
“Fi, we both know that was wishful thinking,” said Oz.
“But that... the multiple year disappearance! The creepy murder maid! The reclusive personality... Oz. Oz. It would have been such a cool way to go out.”
“As you often say, Fi, a good detective doesn’t put her theories before the facts.”
Fischl pulled the cushion out from behind her and dug her nails into it. “Ugh!”
“What,” said Diluc, “is going on.”
“Perhaps I can explain. You see...”
(“Don’t you dare, Oz!”)
“...as you may be aware, the Knights are holding a charity ball next week.”
“I’m aware.” Raising money for new schoolhouses in Springvale and Port Dornman, if Diluc recalled correctly.
“Well, my partner Fi is... one dapper customer. Suave too...”
(“It’s true,” mourned Fischl, “I’m very suave. Cursed with the charisma of a lead character.”)
“...and so a friend asked to be her date for the ball...”
(“I don’t have friends!” said Fi, burying her face in the cushion. “I’m a detective, I have contacts.”)
“...and she said yes...”
(Muffled: “Every jaded... still a romantic... that tough exterior!”)
“...on three separate occasions.”
(A wretched screeching noise could be heard from behind the cushion.)
Diluc let out a breath.
“I see,” he said.
He’d never had that exact misfortune befall him in his teens, but he sympathised regardless.
“I think I understand your predicament. You came here in search of... an excuse not to go to the ball.”
“A dramatic death,” said Fischl through the cushion. “A final case. Like Inspector Montmirail in Closing Time, you know? Such a cool way to go out. So cool.”
“I... apologise,” said Diluc, “but perhaps—”
The door opened and Adelinde bustled in. She looked like she’d either been laughing or crying: he knew which he would bet on.
“I took the liberty of making some chamomile,” she said, setting a tea tray down and clearing out the glasses. “Oz, would you care for a saucer?”
“No thank you, ma’am.”
Adelinde curtseyed and departed.
Just before she closed the door, she turned back and added:
“Oh, Master, did you want any cyanide with that?” (Diluc glared.) “No? Well, just let me know if you need anything.”
Diluc didn’t miss the abject betrayal in Fischl’s eyes as she watched the door close.
“She could have asked me,” she muttered.
No further words were spoken as they waited for their tea to cool.
“Oz,” said Fischl, after her first sip, “Oz, do we have any other murder cases? There’s still time...”
Oz pointedly ignored her. “Master Diluc,” he said, “it seems like today’s discussion has caused a little embarrassment for both parties.”
“Go on,” said Diluc.
Fischl buried her face back in the cushion again, muffling her words. “Can’t believe... just a vigilante... unfair...”
“I’ll see to it that Fi’s report doesn’t contain anything that would spark the Knights’ interest. In return...”
“Adelinde can be trusted with her discretion. As can I.”
“Excellent,” said Oz. “I hope this will be the start of an excellent working relationship. I suspect we’ll cross paths again sooner than not. Have you met the Night Sister yet?”
“Who?”
“Only a matter of time, I’m sure.” Oz nudged Fischl. “Come on, Fi. Drink your tea up, and let’s head home. Tomorrow we execute plan B.” To Diluc, he added, “It’s the plan where she has an honest conversation with her friends.”
“I hate Plan B,” Fischl grumbled. She stood up, dusting off her slacks. “It’s so off genre.”
Diluc had no idea what to say, so he took a sip of his tea. Excellent as usual.
As Oz and Fischl made their way out, Oz paused at the door.
“Oh, and Master Ragnvindr, if I may?” he said. “Welcome back to Mondstadt.”