Chapter Text
The porcelain was thin enough that light passed through it when lifted, turning the tea inside into something almost luminous. The berries bled their color into the cup, a slowly swirl of pink and red filled the hot water in an irregular tempo. Petals of marcotte dragged to the bottom slowly and calmly.
Across the low table, Signora did not drink. Steam curled past her untouched cup as though even heat understood where it was not welcome.
“Ah… Is the tea not to your liking?” Columbina hummed under her breath, something tuneless and soft, her fingers folded neatly in her lap.
Sandrone had already dismantled the sugar tongs and laid the pieces in a neat row beside her saucer. She had not noticed she’d done it.
Capitano was the only one of them missing, his seat empty but nevertheless present. He notified in advance of his absence as per he was needed in more important business such as commanding the reinforcements of the recently emptied lairs of Delegards.
“It’s unusual,” Signora said at last, as though resuming a conversation paused only seconds ago, “to advance someone so quickly.”
Seventeen.
An inconvenient number. Old enough to bleed for a cause. Young enough to still believe in one.
Arlecchino lifted her cup before anyone could mistake her silence for hesitation.
“His file is irregular,” Sandrone said, not looking up. Sandrone said, not looking up. One of the tong screws rolled beneath her fingertip, back and forth, back and forth. “Field performance exceeds projections. Impulse control does not.”
“He survives,” Signora replied. “That places him above many.”
Columbina tilted her head. “Survival is such a temporary talent.” Melancholly filled her voice, as she dragged her naked feet back and forth the cold floor.
“It places him in my laboratory reports,”Sandrone went on, paying the Damselette little to no mind, a thread of irritation tightening her voice. “Glupov. Barely three years ago. A restricted research wing. Someone with red hair and no authorization decided my automaton’s internal lattice would ‘work better’ if rearranged.”
Columbina’s humming paused, just for a breath. “Did it?”
“What do you think? No! Of course it did not!” she said sharply. “That brat only altered a calibrated core without schematics, tools, or permission. The sensitivity spike nearly caused a cascade failure. I had to rebuild half the western wall and recalibrate every guard unit in the sector.”
“Oh,” Columbina said softly. “I remember. You replaced their cores with a sensitivity curve capable of detecting clutters of sudden humidity and weather shifts and atmospherics disturbances.”
“Yes,” Sandrone said. “Which is precisely why I do not require more children wandering near my work. With one about to parade through these halls with a title, I will have to reinforce every chamber. In case any other rascal even attempts to touch one of my dear creations.” A faint pause. “Less he wants to leave with a set of fingers less in his hands.”
Arlecchino’s gaze lifted as she stirred the spoon with deliberate care, eyes staring up at her colleague. “The children in the Hearth survive as well, so do they serve the Tsaritsa well within the titles of Operators or Commanders.” She resumed the previous point, caring less for Sandrone’s worries.
“That doesn’t make them ready to wear a noble title. One can only wonder what it is that the Rooster is plotting now." The spoon she was holding began to push down, crushing the drowning marcotte without noticing.
Signora’s voice cut in. “The decision has already been made.”
“Don’t mention children to me today,” Sandrone muttered. “I have not forgiven the last group that wandered into my workshop. I swear if I must start designing hand restraints for each of them before they put their fingers on their metal surface I—
“Don’t be so mean Sandrone” Columbina interrupted gently. “I’m sure Father is taking good care of all the children, they were just curious, they couldn't help it.”
Signora did not look at Arlecchino. “Ah Columbina… Surely that name is unnecessary.”
“No, Rosalyn, It’s perfectly fine.” She folded her hands in her lap. “As for the matter at hand, I care little for age. That old man would not extend an invitation lightly. If the reports are accurate —and they rarely are not— then the outcome was decided long before this tea was poured.”
Her gaze flicked toward the steam curling between them.
“A seat will be given.”
Slowly the brew began to drift and soon each one except Arlecchino herself set their empty cups on the table. The sugarcubes were gone, only tiny bits of them remaining on the plate, some scattered around the table. There was nothing more to discuss.
Signora rose first, gloves uncreased, expression unchanged. “I have documents to prepare,” she said, which in her language meant the matter was finished.
Sandrone gathered the sugar tongs, now properly assembled, and slipped them back into place with mechanical precision. “I will need advance notice before he is permitted near the lower laboratories,” she said. “Preferably in writing.”
Columbina stood last. Her chair made no sound against the floor. “It will be a beautiful night,” she murmured, though no one had mentioned the ceremony date.
Arlecchino remained seated until the door closed behind them. Only then did she reach for her cup again. The tea had gone cold.
…
The first time Arlecchino saw him was not at the ceremony but one morrow during a heavy silver storm, luring and trapping her within the palace walls as to avoid the freezing rain. It was in a corridor.
She noticed it the moment she crossed the outer threshold, servants moving in pairs instead of alone, banners being unrolled from long storage, the low murmur of orders passed in careful tones. The scent of preparation: wax, polish, fresh linen.
Ceremony always reshaped Zapolyarny in small, deliberate ways, as though the palace itself understood when it was expected to witness history.
Frost tainted the windows and as soon as Arlecchino handed off her coat, verglas and frost melted down from her hair and body. The warmth of her blood cooling down as the heat from the outpolar palace replaced it. Her feet carried her down the west corridor — the quieter artery of the wing, used now for arrivals who were not yet meant for public and lower eyes.
Kresnik's Torches had begun to be covered and replaced with taller candelabras, their flames steady, disciplined. Artificial as well, its color being regulated from different components and regulating its color to better reflect the white walls engulfing them
Red hair caught the light first, where two servants were finishing the placement of a runner along the stone floor. They stepped aside when they noticed her, heads bowed.
He stood at the intersection near the stairwell, not lost exactly, but paused in unfamiliar territory. He had removed his outer coat, folded neatly over one arm.
Arlecchino let her gaze travel over him, cataloguing each detail of a soldier: Regulation high boots — near identical to those issued to the Oprichniki. The cut of his uniform followed the same disciplined structure, practical, unadorned and deep blue. His gloves were tucked through his belt: thicker make, the kind favored by skirmishers operating in harsher fronts. That matched the hydro cartridges at his side, ammunition seals intact, alongside a silver-thread loop securing his Vision case. Hydro, she noted. And not a Delusion. Rarer for the locals and more often entrusted to medics, support operators, containment specialists, not vanguard attackers meant to break lines through frost and steel.
His mask rested covering his face. And she noted it was close to an agent design, but refined sharper edges, cleaner polish, as though the standard had been studied and then improved upon. And yet there was something in its shape, particularly its profile that resembled maybe a sort of creature she could not name for sure.
But above all what caught more attention was the lack of insignias beyond regulation issues. No frost-warrant badges. No decorative marks of commendation. Nothing displayed, far less than one would expect from a soldier raised so abruptly toward the highest tier of the Tsaritsa’s forces. Too little ornament for someone about to become a Harbinger.
Then again, certainty in such matters did not belong to her; Arlecchino remained deliberately removed from the lives of common soldiers, her attention rarely straying beyond the boundaries of the Hearth. Each and every one of the Harbingers had been hand picked by the Director’s design, with only two granted a new name and home under the cold and unloving embrace of Her Majesty, that being Columbina, and herself. A pardon for murder and the seat of King first promised by the last Knave but with the seat of the Queen far gone.
A guard spoke to him with quite the deferential tone, in the way one addresses someone not yet ranked but already important, she had seen it most on men of riches and lineage. He listened with his head slightly inclined, posture straight, serious but without arrogance.
When the guard finished, he nodded once. “Thank you,” he said, voice low, clear. Young, and a bit too chirpy for her liking.
Then he turned and saw her. The reaction was immediate as he straightened his back a fraction more, his shoulders squaring as though bracing for inspection out of instinct.
Good, she thought. Up close, the battlefield rumors had shown in quieter ways than scars. He had stood in balance rather than rest, weight distributed as though still expecting uneven ground. His gaze had moved before settling: doors, distances, corners. A habit too ingrained to be conscious. Even in stillness, nothing about him had been unguarded.
“This wing is restricted after the third bell,” Arlecchino said, voice even. “Preparations.”
His hands hurried to discard his mask from covering his face, facing her wide and unlike the norms of privates that urged them to keep their eyes coveted in front of their superiors. “Yes, ma’am.” He might be proper but he has his own pride as a future diplomat.
“I was told to wait here to be shown to the guest quarters for the time being.” The accent lingered under his common Snezhnayan — Of course.— coastal and roughened by wind.
There had been little else to say. She had not felt the need to command further, and he had not presumed to fill the space. When she moved, he had stepped aside at once, unprompted, clearing the corridor with an ease that suggested awareness rather than obedience alone.
As she passed, the air had shifted faintly in her wake but she had not looked back.
The hearth along the far wall sat dark, iron grate empty, ash long cleared. It had not seen flame in months. Perhaps longer. Heat dulled the senses; she had no use for dullness.
Arlecchino removed her gloves first, setting them on the narrow table beside the door with the same care she afforded everything that was meant to last. Her coat followed, folded once before being laid over the chair’s back. No servant entered to assist.
The windows stood tall and uncurtained, frost gathering at the edges in fragile white filigree. Beyond them, Zapolyarny stretched in pale stillness, the city lights distant and sparse beneath the endless northern dark. Her gaze drifted once, briefly, to the space where fire should have lived.
Seventeen.
The thought returned without invitation, quiet as falling snow.
Arlecchino did not believe in destiny as she knew to heart a good replacement. Patterns.
Snezhnaya had always told the same story, only the names changed. A young soul, bright enough to be mistaken for light. A burden placed upon narrow shoulders. A title that weighed more than armor. The old poems called them beacons.
Burning hearts made beacons. Beacons drew storms.
They did not survive for long. So much had her comrade said. Temporary talents.
Arlecchino had once been the youngest among them. Once, she too had stood where the old poems placed their doomed heroes— young, crowned, and already walking toward the storm.
Eighteen summers old, named King of the House of the Hearth and seated at a table where no one else still carried the softness of youth behind their teeth.
Power had not come gradually. It had arrived all at once: rank, authority and influence, settling into hands already darkened by what they had done to survive. It had been overwhelming. And she had never allowed that to be seen.
Wolves did not soothe the wounded in the Palace of the Everwinter. They learned where weakness lived, and they remembered. If anything, they would rather treat them as if to give freedom to a Cirnareka, piercing through that extraneous heart, leaving their second and truest one to fill their body whole and awaiting for the noble covered by fur to cruelly snap their jaws.
Most of her days belonged to the Hearth — her Hearth, now reshaped. New rules lined its halls, new structures laid with deliberate care. They would not undo what had been done before Crucabena’s fall; nothing could reach that far back. But they marked a boundary, like a controlled burn through frozen woodland: a blackened line drawn so the next fire would find nothing left to devour.
It was not kindness or fertility, it would not flourish like the greenery in the sides of Mount Esus across Liffey. It was mere containment.
The nights, however, offered no such work.
Without the children, the corridors stretched long and hollow, the quiet settling into the stone like deeper frost. On evenings like these, with little of the warmth of her comrades, the King of the House of the Hearth sat alone with a single glass of wine, watching from her seat in an empty dining room.
The knock broke the stillness.
“Enter.”
Too uncertain for a servant and too restrained for a soldier. The messenger who entered looked barely older than those under her protection. He approached fast, shoulders held stiff with the effort of not shaking as he extended the envelope, black wax stamped with the sigil of the Director.
He did not lift his eyes. “From the Jester, Your Excellency.”
Of course. Arlecchino took the envelope herself. The messenger flinched and broke the seal with a single motion, melting the wax with a sharp slash of fire and read.
“You may wait,” she said.
He remained standing, tray still in his grip, as if dismissal required further proof. Paper whispered as it unfolded and could be read in thin ink cursive. The scent of— now burnt— Winter Icelea accompanied with sweet Zaytun Peaches.
"To Her Majesty’s Harbingers, those who bear the Tsaritsa’s will in a fractured world.
When the long night turns its gaze toward us, and the old fires are named so that new ones may be lit, a seat long absent from our circle shall no longer remain so.
By the authority entrusted to me, and under Her Majesty’s unyielding design, you are called to stand in witness to a Ceremony of Appointment: the elevation of one who has earned a place not offered, but taken through trial, blood, and inevitability.
The rite shall be held on the night of Krsnik Noc, within the inner assembly hall of Zapolyarny Palace, where oaths are not spoken lightly and names are not given without cost.
Your presence is required as a covenant. Let no distance, duty, nor inconvenience presume to outweigh the Tsaritsa’s design. Set your affairs in order. Conclude what must be concluded as for neither is truly different from the other within the Tsaritsa's beneficent, loving ideals. Leave unfinished only what you are willing to answer for.
Further instruction will follow upon your arrival beneath the Palace vaults, where winter listens.
For The Knave
From: Her Majesty, Tsaritsa,
The Jester
Director of the Fatui."
Her expression did not shift as her gaze reached the final line.
No seat stood empty. The Tenth remained unclaimed by intention; the rest were already filled. Pierro. Capitano. Dottore. Columbina. Herself. Pulcinella. Scaramouche. Sandrone. Signora. Pantalone. A closed cycle.
And yet someone had forced a place within it.
She folded the letter once, precisely, and returned it to the messenger’s waiting hands. “You are dismissed.”He lingered half a second too long, held in place by presence rather than command, before retreating as though the air itself had grown too thin to breathe.
A beacon, then.
Let the others admire the light.
Her gaze drifted, unfocused, not toward the window this time, but toward the far wall where the fire should have been. The hearth there had long gone unlit; she preferred the cold. It kept the mind sharp, the body honest.
Old enough to have barely completed his basic Academy training, at least on paper. Young enough that the ink on those records had likely dried unnoticed. His file did not linger on examinations, instructors, or distinctions of study. Those details existed, but only as scaffolding. If the origins whispered in the reports were true, a fishing town pressed against the northern sea, too small for noble lineage and too poor to produce anything but cannon fodder.
No family name worth noting and no inherited seat at any table. Even less to spend into proper training. The reports turned louder after that. Reconnaissance in hostile territory. Skirmisher deployments along unstable borders. Engagements where survival itself counted as distinction. The sort of assignments meant to temper soldiers or remove them from the lists, punish the families in extreme cases.
Still, no precedent charted a rise like this. From the common ranks to Oprichniki command, and from there to the edge of the Harbingers’ circle — a path that should have narrowed, yet it only widened instead.
Despite probability, despite structure, and despite patterns, the prodigy the Mayor had taken under his wing had not disappointed. Pulcinella had not lied. The boy was really something, at the very least counting on the boy's medical records a certain comrade of theirs— predictably. buried himself in by impulse before throwing it away in one lonely desk of his dear stronghold for weeks and that found their way to Arlecchinos hands: Fourteen years old, documented fractures healing in days. Resistance to toxins. Strength and speed beyond baseline and of course, pairing well with the strange rumors of a Varcolac of wolf fur, or a Cirnareka, black as midnight rushing through the winds of north that some of her own children caught from escapades to the city.
…
The nights before Krsnik Noc changed the city long before the awaited day arrived.
Now, even from the palace heights Arlecchino could see the slow spread of light through Snezhnograd's arteries. Lanterns stretched from building to building, their glow blurred by the frost, turning the streets below as if traced with veins of amber beneath the snow. Now and then paper frames were lifted into the sky above, lanterns in the center and decorated with colorful ribbons, drifting upward in fragile ascent before shrinking down, swallowed one by one by the dark.
The cold did not lessen, but the people celebrated the dimming storms all the same.
The squares below did not stay still. Circles formed and dissolved, bodies moving in patterns learned young and never fully forgotten. Even from this height could be seen the courtyards brightened where fabric had been strung across archways, ribbons stiff with frost yet stubborn in their color. Chalk markings framed doorways in pale lines of protection, drawn by steady hands. Braids of garlic and dried nocturnal blossoms hung beside thresholds, their sharp scent threading through the night air.
The ceremony of anointment stretched the season beyond its appointed end, with an extension of three holiday days more for its people, granted to ritual and proclamation alike. The bells rang longer than usual as decrees carried through the streets. Sentences commuted, prisoners pardoned and debts set aside under the Tsaritsa’s kind will, much like it had once happened to herself— like it had happened to Peruere many years ago during her own anointment day. A kind of mercy that was so rare and scarce in these lands, and dispensed with so much care that it was made part of a celebration.
The Chapel of Spilled Blood stood at the center of it all, its high stone walls dressed in frost-bright banners and gilded details. Before the inner rite began, Pulcinella ascended the public dais, his voice practiced and warm, but firm and loud as any good orator should as he read proclamations meant for the good of Snezhnaya — assurances of stability, of protection, of prosperity promised through unity and sacrifice. The crowd listened, solemn and grateful.
Raised upon white marble where once the Palestar Tsars had knelt before saints, the throne stood beneath the vault as though the chapel itself had been remade to accommodate it. It was neither gilded nor ostentatious. Severe lines of pale stone and silver climbed into a high back worked with frost-laden branches, every ornament reduced until only authority remained.
Upon it sat the Tsaritsa. She neither welcomed nor acknowledged those assembled. Hands folded loosely upon one another. The cold she carried was not merely of Snezhnaya's winter; it possessed the sanctity of immutable law. To meet her gaze was to understand that affection had long ago been sacrificed upon the altar of necessity.
Inside the holy walls, however, as they all stood together before the apse, Arlecchino’s gaze lingered not to the altar, nor her glorious majesty of the Tsaritsa, nor even the look of her companions, but to the boy soon to be one of them. His eyes were the first thing that held — dark blue, opaque, the color of water that did not reflect the sky. Perhaps more akin to the orbes of a Nightgaze Crystal-Eye, one kept in a still pond beneath winter branches, surface calm, depth unreadable, the kind of water one could fall into without warning.
The boy stood beneath the Tsaritsa's throne. The rest of him seemed almost discordant by comparison. She could think of his figure with a clearer mind now in the silence of the temple. Too bright for Snezhnaya. His hair burned copper against the chapel’s pale stone, his skin flushed faintly pink from the cold. He was tall for his age, long-limbed rather than broad, built for motion and endurance.
This child does not belong here, she thought, not unkindly.
Pulcinella’s voice answered her doubt almost as if he could feel her doubts, “That boy is a vortex of discord,” the Rooster murmured beside her, pitched low and dry, carried upward to reach her height. “A prodigy of violence, if there ever was one. You would do well not to dismiss him so early.”
He sounded almost offended, if she didn’t know better. Arlecchino did not look down at him. “Water is not rare to me,” she replied quietly.
Pulcinella huffed something like a laugh despite the lack of humor in her words. “Water is scarce in these lands. To taste it, one must break the ice above and pray it answers kindly. I have always been a fortunate man.”
She gave no further answer, despite the distaste forming underneath her tongue at the mayor’s words.
When the royal doors opened— those beautiful gates and holy doors, traditionally built for the private usage of nobles and above all, the old Palestar Tsar, Monomakh Snezhnyi, taken all the way from the old Kietzh— now taken as a mere secondary entrance across the ambulatory. It is, what one can only assume, once detailed and precious decorations taken down in favor of the simplistic colors of red white and blue with fine and well defined straight lines so beloved by the new ruler.
Pierro entered alone and the chapel seemed to narrow further, his steps unhurried, the hem of his coat whispering against the stone as though the building itself leaned closer to listen. He did not raise his voice when he spoke, keeping his eyes wide open. “On this night, we do not create what did not already exist. We name what has proven itself through repetition, through survival, through refusal to fall when falling would have been reasonable.” His gaze passed briefly over the witnesses before returning to the altar. “Strength is common. Endurance is rarer. And inevitability is the rarest of all.” Arlecchino watched the boy closely. He accepted the words as one accepts weather, yet it was not to him Tartaglia found himself looking. Against instinct, against reason, his eyes lifted toward the woman above. Whatever measure she took of him remained imprisoned behind eyes pale as winter skies.
And with those words he too accepted the gift of the Fools. Pierro did not withdraw his hand at once, waiting as the purple crystal with the Palestar engraving— now rested against the young man’s chest as a second, alien heart— flickered with dark and lustrous veins of violet light faintly beneath the glass and against the silver casing as through testing the comfortability of it wearers body, or resisting it. Arlecchino felt it before she consciously registered it, closing her eyes and regulating her breath as she was trained and familiarized with. Inhale slowly through your nose for a count of four. Hold your breath for a count of four. Exhale gently through your mouth for a count of six. A pressure in the air felt sharp and metallic, a harsh crackling sound towering above the hum of restrained water. Inductance.
The sudden surge of Electro raced across his body like a flood loosed without warning, and he responded as he would to water—forcing himself still, trying to arrest the flow through sheer pressure, through a violent act of will. It was the wrong response and like a current forced through a tightened coil, the resistance only deepened the charge, feeding it back into itself.
The Delusion answered with coercive obedience, its power folding inward in only a thin surge.
Every Harbinger present stepped back in unspoken accord from the whip of Electro that climbed above the muted presence of Hydro, snapping faintly against stone and silver alike.
The Tsaritsa alone remained unmoved.
Not a finger shifted upon the arm of her throne. Not a fold of her mantle stirred. Violet arcs split the air before her, close enough to stain the chapel with the scent of ozone, yet they never seemed to trespass beyond the invisible boundary of her presence.
Sandrone scoffed, the sound clipped and satisfied, as though the outcome had merely confirmed a private calculation. Arlecchino did not look at most of her companions' reactions, and yet her attention was drawn on Pulcinella’s expression, the Mayor’s usual composure pulled thin. Whether what flickered there was concern, frustration, or something more possessive, she could not yet tell.
Pierro did not withdraw his hand. The violet light beneath the glass dimmed gradually, retreating into a steadier glow as the Delusion settled against the boy’s chest, its rhythm slowing, synchronizing. Only then did Pierro speak, his voice cutting cleanly through the lingering tension. “Do you feel it?” he asked.
“You have lived long enough to know the touch of unseen hands,” Pierro continued, the words measured, deliberate. “Fate, scholars, gods—each believing themselves entitled to shape what you carry. Remember this, then: a weapon does not bend merely by command and just as you will, it must be honed to endure the bitter cold of this world before its threads meet its end at finality.”
The boy drew a slow, careful breath. His hand rose, hesitated, then came to rest over the Delusion without clutching into it, merely carefully acknowledging its presence. He did not smile nor did offer thanks, instead choosing to raise his shoulder and chest up in front of his superior as one proud man would.
Arlecchino saw the faint shift in Pierro’s posture, almost imperceptible. That, she noted, pleased him.
The air faintly smelled of ozone and somewhere in the chapel a few candles guttered. The blue sharp eyes of the older man seemed to test its cut into the boy’s opaque ones, ones which were now tainted with the smallest thrall of purple wine colors. “Many mistake elevation for absolution,” he stated.
“From this night forward,” he said, “the name you carried into battle is no longer sufficient.” His eyes freed the one before him, raising his gaze up on the marbled vault above as if searching for something or someone through the skyline. “You shall be known among us as Tartaglia.”
Pierro’s voice softened only slightly as he added, “To the world beyond these walls, you may answer to Childe.” A concession, perhaps. Or a mask. “But remember this: one name will invite you into rooms. The other will follow you onto the battlefield. Do not confuse their purposes.”
Only then did the Tsaritsa speak.
"Tartaglia.”
The words descended from the throne without haste, stripped of warmth, stripped even of expectation, as a testament or judgment from up high, further than the cruel heavens’ themselves.
“See that the world remembers the name”
Arlecchino did not look to the altar once it was finished. Her gaze remained on the newly anointed Harbinger as the ceremony drew to its quiet close, noting the absence of triumph in his bearing, the lack of relief. Good. Outside, the city would celebrate, feast, and tell stories warmed by lanternlight and shared food. Inside these walls, only acknowledgment had been granted. She turned away knowing the distinction mattered — that some honors were meant to be carried alone, and that the boy now wore one of the heaviest.
No one had anything to say. Even Pulcinella fell silent. Something faint and unwelcome tightened in Arlecchino’s chest — a sting she did not immediately name.
When the ceremony concluded, her feet did not move past a couple of steps, her back facing Tartaglia.
Before the Young Lord took to his assigned chambers, some Harbingers decided to jump at the opportunity and tested the waters. She watched through the corner of her eye and listened carefully, now unmoved, as Tartaglia was approached by the Rooster instead— eager to flee the scene with his boy before anyone else could get their hands on them — It was only when he turned, when those dark eyes met hers directly, brow drawn in brief confusion or curiosity, did she take back control over her own body.
Weeks would pass before the feeling settled.