Chapter Text
The first thing Grand Master Varka saw upon waking from a drunken stupor in Favonius Keep was a clipboard hanging above him.
“Grand Master, what is this?”
It was the resource manager’s voice, echoing through the hangover to take root and meaning in his disoriented brain. There was an outline of her—faint, slight, feminine—beyond the clipboard.
“It’s uhh . . . numbers,” Varka decided, feeling around himself—stone? tiles?—as the brightness of sunlight stabbed into his eyes. Oh, how the world swayed. “Dancing numbers.”
“Nope. It’s letters.” She jabbed a finger at a line of text on the frontmost paper. “These letters spell entertainment budget. The numbers,” she spat, “are these. And you know what they are?”
It was a question, but probably not a real one. His toes were cold. Before Varka could catch up, she went on.
“They are three times over the budget.” Taking the clipboard back, she circled the figure so aggressively that Varka felt the scrape of the pen over paper as if the pen dug into the side of his head. “Not twice! Three times over,” she hissed and showed him what to his eyes was little better than a blackish smudge on a whiteish background. “How in the world am I expected to balance this?”
Varka chuckled, waving in a no worries gesture, which was all he could do without making himself more nauseated. “I trust your abilities.”
“And I trust,” she bit out, each word the crack of a whip, “the company will get new boots in seven years’ time.”
“Boots!” The Grand Master shot up, making her jump. “What did I do with my boots?”
“I’m given to understand,” the resource manager said, leaning her clipboard against a hip, “there was a boot-tossing competition.” She lifted her chin at the chalk box drawn on the stone away from the campfire, boots strewn around it.
“Did I win that?” Varka mused, squinting as he searched for his boots.
“Just—” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Once you’ve sobered up, make time for a meeting, Grand Master. All right?”
Varka rubbed the back of his neck—stiff from his having fallen asleep on the ground—and watched her retreat. The Knights’ resource manager was in charge of all monetary matters, resource allocation, and project planning, ensuring the Knights were taken care of without being a drain on Mondstadt. Closest to the 6th Company—logistics—she spent her workdays at her desk, behind mountains of paperwork.
Procurement requests, inventory reports, maintenance requests, personnel assignment forms, vendor invoices, operational and asset disposal requests, among others, made up towers of papers that Varka could not care and Jean could not get to read. In contrast to the ever-active knights, she was the reasonable backbone seated for all bureaucratic tasks that made the machine run.
Having never taken part in combat or, indeed, any sort of training, she was a person seldom seen—let alone at the front lines of a mission—who generally communicated through Hertha or one of her knights. With the Nod-Krai expedition having drawn out past the projected timeline, Jean had written to Varka a week earlier that she would arrive to focus on a rehaul of their projected spending in person for a direct look at the local economy.
She was one of the Mondstadters Varka had often brushed shoulders with, but seldom spoken at length to, of late, though the amount of work that fell on her shoulders was not lost on him.
“Good thing she didn’t shoot first and ask questions later,” he said to himself, pushing to his feet to grab the boots and get ready for a meeting.
The RM’s sole request for her accommodation in Nod-Krai was as large a desk as could be procured. She was not disappointed. The dining-table-sized desk was brought to a former supply tent, and the manager had no sooner dropped her bags than she began sorting the paperwork that had accumulated since the Grand Master set out from Mond into piles.
It was an hour before noon when a shadow appeared at the tent entrance.
“Come in.”
Grand Master Varka stepped inside, nudging the flap back with an elbow—each of his hands holding a mug—and paused at the sight of the towers flanking the manager. “Whoa.”
The woman glanced at her watch, mumbling, “Sooner than I expected.” Then, “Excuse the mess. I have much to sort through but Mika had kindly set aside everything urgent, so I thought I would tackle that before finishing organizing.”
Nodding, Varka hooked a foot around the leg of a chair and dragged it to sit across the desk, facing her. Then he set down two mugs of hot coffee, sliding one over to her.
“Oh, thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.” Varka eyed the stack of papers closest to him and took his mug into both hands. With clear sight, her gray undereyes pulled his focus. “I should’ve been there to welcome you to the base. When did you get in?”
“Last night.”
“Slept since?”
She sucked her teeth and leveled a glare at him. “You do realize the budget is not a suggestion? Right?”
Varka scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. “Well, yes, but you know . . . We do what we can to keep the morale up, haha!”
Dropping her pen, she leaned back into her chair, closed her eyes, and began rubbing her temples. “If Albedo had not been as self-sufficient lately and the training and onboarding schedules largely paused since your departure, we would be a full quarter in the red, based on what I’ve seen so far.”
“Oops?”
She drew a breath and leaned forward, planting her elbows on the table. “I am going to start selling the horses.”
“Aw, come on, it can’t be that bad,” Varka said. “I know you’ve planned for—What was it? Four versions of this expedition?”
“Yes, all of four of which were projected to be shorter than the expedition already is,” she said. “Really, Grand Master, what in the world could’ve prompted you to throw our finances behind”—she flipped through papers—“Master Wick’s wheel repair?”
“Good man, Master Wick,” Varka said. “He offered to have our team’s supplies in his wagon up a steep hill and we kept the wolves from scaring his horse along the way. It was our fault the wheel cracked.”
“Where in the four budget proposals was the ‘local wagon repairs’ category?” she asked. “Don’t even get me started on the tab from ‘The Flagship’, and why do we have an invoice for delivery to Natlan from some ‘Clink-Clank Krumkake Craftshop’?”
“I had to fight for that invoice,” Varka muttered into his mug. “Ahem! That was a letter to our honorary Knight, a great favor, and besides, Aino and Ineffa wouldn’t let me pay ‘em the real price.”
“You were negotiating up?”
“How could I underpay an orphan left friendless when her family was out delivering my letter?”
There was a minute of silence. She stared at him. Well, she glared at him, but the Grand Master kept a bright, mollifying expression.
“When the Acting Grand Master said I should come over here to rehaul the budget, I thought she was fretting,” the resource manager said, shaking her head. “I owe her an apology.” She scanned the paperwork surrounding her. “And a drink.”
“I know it’s not exactly according to plan, but there’s a lot the people of Nod-Krai have done for us since we arrived without any payment,” Varka said. “And all the treasure we’ve come across hasn’t been processed to enter into the balance, so it’s not as bad as it looks.”
She took up her mug and sighed. “That . . . does make me feel a bit better.”
Varka beamed. “Right? And us picking up the tab so often—well, that was my call, so if you patch it up from my salary, it’ll be fine.”
“That’s not how the budget works,” she said flatly. “If there comes a time for you to be financing our operations from your pocket, then I’m not doing my job.” Taking a sip, she ran through the information she had gone over since her arrival. “I guess we could push the arrow replenishment back a month, since some of Lohen’s people are going back.” Blunt nails tapped on the side of her mug, her attention drifting back to him. “I didn’t get to the medical expenses.”
“All good,” Varka said. “We’ve got supplies to last, and haven’t had any emergency expenditure.”
“That’s good news at least.” Pursing her lips, she set the mug down and faced the Grand Master again. “I’ll have a draft of the new budget proposal ready tomorrow or the morning after. Might need an assistant to help me sort all this.”
Varka nodded. “I’ll send someone within the hour.”
“Thank you. For the coffee too.” Blowing out a breath, she took up her pen. “I’ll need your approval on the draft before making a copy for Jean.”
“Consider it signed!” Varka got to his feet.
She frowned. “Please read it. I could be embezzling funds, for all you know.”
The Grand Master blinked, then met her eyes with an evaluating, calm sort of gaze. As if he could see through to her very soul.
A grin shaped his mouth. “Nah.”
With the help of Mika and another four cups of coffee, the Knights’ resource manager had all of her work divided into categories, a third of it done, and the proposal ready for review by the next evening. She was no stranger to long nights, but the fatigue of travel—to which she was a great stranger—was getting to her.
It was on autopilot that she nodded when Mika said he would get the Grand Master, and that she paperclipped the proposal neatly and pushed it across the table for the man to review. Yawning into her elbow, she let her eyelids fall for a moment—
And then it was the next day.
Birdsong filled her ear as she straightened in her chair, a blanket falling from her shoulders, and scanned the tent. The proposal lay where she had left it, now turned towards her and complete with the Grand Master’s signature. Rising from the seat to stretch her back, she spotted a row of water bottles on a side table that was not there the day before, and an assortment of snacks piled into a low wicker basket.
The entrance flaps to her temporary office opened quietly, a blue eye peering in.
“Ah, you’re awake.” Mika entered with a blush on his pale cheeks. “Sorry to intrude, I was wondering if you wanted to come to lunch.”
“Lunch time already?”
He nodded. “Grand Master said better not to wake you and that he had left some water and food around after signing the proposal, so I was only checking in.”
She stooped to pick up the blanket, a passing thought about it, too, being the Grand Master’s doing afloat in her mind. “Thank you, Mika. I’m not hungry, but I could go for a bath.” Flipping up the pages clipped together, she was relieved to find the signature on the copy as well. “Could I count on you to help me get a few things packed for the next mail dispatch to Mondstadt?”
“Of course!”
“I appreciate it.” She folded the blanket and placed it on the chair. “Remind me to thank the Grand Master, too.”
Oooh boy, the way we're about the yearn, y'all are not ready. Next chapter will be up on Friday.
♡ +💬 to make my day, and ty for reading ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡