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It had been a long time that Diluc had been walking. At this point, the temperature had gotten only moderately warmer, the trees overhead lush and green but still dusted with the familiar powdery layers of snow. The ground under his feet was slushy and uneven.
Each step Diluc took was agonizing. The bandages around his waist did what they were intended to do — that is, they held in everything that needed to be held in and did not allow him to bleed anymore than he already had — but archons were they uncomfortable. How his body ached and pulled at itself with every slow, dragging step he took. His shoulder blades sagged with each sharp spike of pain that overtook him.
His memory was spattered with holes. What he could recall was that he was not alone — that some supporter, some friend or ally, had ensured he could move on to the place mapped out on that small piece of paper he’d memorized. He could not remember what had happened to that map, or who had given it to him, or how, but it had ended up in his hands nonetheless. Whether it were a harbinger of doom or a prayer for protection, he was willing and received it openly.
Before him, the forest was thinning out, ending in a few stunted, straggling trees. The end of the path looked out on a vast lake. (Diluc summoned a mental image of the map — was this where he was supposed to end up?) Even early into the afternoon, icefishers sat, their rods tipped deep into the vast expanse, their eyes watching the water and each other closely. Diluc imagined that there was a sort of suspicion that arose when you were in a position as compromising as icefishing. He’d never attempted it before, but it was easy to imagine that it was competitive in nature, that each fish caught was another one’s neighbor would not catch. Thoughts such as this were what circled in his mind as he started following along the expanse of the lake, his eyes fixated on a set of twinkling lights cradling the sunset.
These lights, at least to his knowledge, were those of the small Snezhnayan town of Morepesok.
– – –
Tartaglia had been pacing his lodgings adjacent to the Zapolyarny Palace for just over an hour when he was summoned to a council meeting. The premise for the meeting was the same one that had been rampantly circling through his anxious mind, the same puddle of blood and feathers both he and the fellow harbingers had been supervising in Dottore’s laboratory for over six months.
Now, it was gone. “Escaped,” according to Dottore. Tartaglia knew the truth. He’d boosted it out of the window, had taught it the map for days on end prior to the day of its vanishing.
That “thing” would be lodging in his family home soon.
Tartaglia knew that the plan would work. If there was one thing that his family — specifically, his mother — could not resist, it was the helpless. The fragile. This was why they’d been so patient with Tartaglia himself initially, after his emergence from the Abyss. It took them a solid two years to realize that they were handling a monster.
According to what Tartaglia had gauged about the “thing” before sending it that direction, there was no way that it would harm them. Instead, it’d curl inward, snuggle in their hand-sewn sheets, wait reticently and submissively for each kernel of attention his family would dutifully provide.
Tartaglia had first met the “thing” upon his return to Zapolyarny Palace, almost immediately after his first “tour” as the Eleventh Fatui harbinger. Dottore had been eager to show all of his fellow harbingers (now including Tartaglia) his latest creation.
It wasn’t large. It was shorter and thinner than Tartaglia, its frame rigid with bones and taut but weak muscle. Its hair hung in lank strips. The most unusual feature on its body was the pair of massive, limp wings hanging from its back. According to Dottore, they were immobile, a cosmetic feature and nothing more than that. But what good was it to have the keys to freedom and not the ability to unlock it?
Tartaglia felt a surge of pity for it, that shell of a living thing, that near-human. It reminded him of the first few days after he surfaced from the Abyss, the way he walked the world as if he were not a part of it anymore. That first introduction was what compelled him to strive for one day releasing it.
Now, circled around the Tsaritsa’s long table, with all eyes on him, Tartaglia felt awash with a secret sense of pride. This entire dilemma was a result of his actions. How incredible it was, to see them all waiting on what he had to say? He usually slipped under the radar, was brushed off for being ignorant and idiotic. But not this time.
“Would you care…” – the Tsaritsa drew out her first sentence, each word slipping like molasses down the pale expanse of her tongue – “to explain yourself?”
Tartaglia watched the eyes of the other ten Fatui harbingers. Due to his actions, the entire team had been summoned. Each member was on a varying scale of passively annoyed to enraged (based primarily on how far they’d had to travel for this conference). Arlecchino was seething, as were Pulcinella and Pantalone. But Columbina wasn’t. Neither was the Tsaritsa herself. Therefore, this council felt as divided as any Fatui harbinger meeting often was. None of them would be able to get along even if their lives depended on it.
Thankfully, this situation was much less dire than that. The only life on the line here was Tartaglia’s.
“I…” Tartaglia hesitated, before mentally deciding to just fuck it all and settle on the most complicated conversational route imaginable.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
– – –
Looming over the doorway in front of him was a simple, painted “X.” Exempt. At least, that was what Diluc could remember the signal meaning. His memory was spotty at best.
From what Diluc recalled, an exemption meant that whoever resided in the home before him did not have to pay taxes to the Tsaritsa. Typically, only high-ranking Fatui officials and influential businessmen could earn this status symbol.
His stomach riled at the thought of asking for help from supporters of the Fatui. Nonetheless, he was desperate. And had already mentally come to terms with the implications of what he was now about to do.
His fist rapped twice against the door.
The door immediately flew open, and a draft of warm air accompanied by the smell of a freshly cooked meal filled the space between Diluc and the home. His mind drifted, his body metaphysically floating toward the food and warmth.
Without realizing it, Diluc fainted at the footsteps of his soon-to-be saviors, a letter from their son in his jacket pocket.
When Diluc awoke, he was lying at the foot of a fireplace, his body tightly wrapped in animal furs. Around him, conversation droned on, flickering in and out of his attention as he came to. Then, a head popped up right in front of him.
“Who are you?” The speaker was a kid. A little boy, maybe ten years old. He prodded Diluc’s cheek with a single warm finger.
“Teucer! Don’t do that.” Another voice, a woman’s. The kid, apparently named Teucer, was now pulled off and away from Diluc. “Get out! Leave us alone for a moment, will you? Help Mama in the kitchen.”
The one who’d pulled Teucer away now came into view. “Are you okay?”
Diluc blinked once, then twice. This new stranger was a woman, just around his age at the oldest. She, like who he’d presumed was her younger brother, had bright ginger hair and pale blue eyes. Her face was spattered with freckles and seemed perpetually red, even after she’d backed away from the fire to sit across from Diluc.
His body ached gruesomely as he surged upward into a half-hearted seated position. His hand fumbled lazily in the layers of furs, finding his coat pocket after a few seconds of searching. The woman across from him, still unnamed, was cautious as he slid his hand out of the blanket slowly. In his open hand, he showed the crumpled letter, in what he hoped came off as a peace offering.
“For me?” The woman gently took it from him.
Her eyes snagged on the Fatui insignia stamp momentarily. She bit her lip, smoothed out the envelope carefully, then did a rapid double-take of the room surrounding her. Once she’d gauged that she was alone, she unfolded the letter, tucking its wax seal and envelope into a hidden pocket in her skirt.
“Ajax sent you. Are you…?”
Diluc understood the question even as her voice trailed off, finishing to continue asking the question curving along the bow of her lips. He shook his head left and right once, sharply.
“Good. Good,” — she laughed, ran a hand through her hair with relief — “I’m Tonia. It’s nice to meet you.”
She glanced toward another room, one outside of Diluc’s limited frame of vision.
As he attempted to crane his neck, a sharp surge of pain shot up from his shoulder blades into the tendons in his neck. A gasp of pain slipped from his mouth. Immediately, he cursed himself over the fact that he’d allowed this small fragment of vulnerability to show through.
Tonia’s eyes shot to his. “Are you injured? It’s quite the walk… From where you came from… to Morepesok.”
In the other room, an older voice: “Where’s he from?”
“Mama, I’ll tell you later. Give me a moment,” Tonia shouted. Then, she leaned in closer, toward Diluc. “Can you speak?”
Admittedly, Diluc hadn’t thought about speaking for a long time. Typically, the only emotions he tended to feel could be communicated through grunts, groans, or facial expressions alone. There hadn’t been many opportunities in the place he’d come from for him to discuss more complicated matters, those that might require more than physical language. He sighed aloud and summoned as much energy as he could.
“Yes.”
For the first time in well over a year, Diluc had spoken. His voice was raspy from disuse, weaker and more high-pitched than he’d remembered it being.
Tonia smiled, relieved. “I knew it. Ajax can be so clueless.”
An expression Diluc couldn’t quite puzzle out overcame her face momentarily before she smiled an even brighter smile.
“How do you two know each other, exactly? If you don’t mind my asking.”
Before Diluc could respond, a third stranger entered the room. Provided that he couldn’t crane his neck, he wasn’t able to see her until she was in his line of sight, but it didn’t take much observation to discern who she was. Based on Tonia’s immediate deference — the way her body slumped and curved inward, her eagerness to assist this woman overtaking her initial curiosity — it was obvious that this new woman was her mother.
Tonia’s mother leaned over Diluc. She looked just like the man that had helped him get to this place. Now that he thought about it, all of these people looked like that man. Was this group of kind strangers the Eleventh’s family?
– – –
Tartaglia’s admittedly playful question had not rolled over well with the rest of the council.
Il Dottore, the second Fatui harbinger, had been the first to speak.
“Is it really fair for us to interrogate the Eleventh as a council? The only one who has a qualm with him — and, therefore, one of only two individuals who should be allowed to rule on his punishment afterward — is me.”
The other harbingers shot the Doctor a simultaneous nasty look. While they almost never succeeded in compromising, this was one area where they could all agree. Grievances involving two Fatui harbingers were traditionally settled through a conference and civil council vote. Attempting to circumvent these rules in order to achieve harsher punishments was grounds for great scorn (something Dottore was, admittedly, a frequent receiver of).
Pulcinella scoffed aloud. “Your Highness, if I may…”
The Tsaritsa nodded.
“It is traditional for us to rule on this as a council. And, might I add, this is an issue that concerns all of us. We were all presented with the finding, and all possess our own respective feelings towards the matter. It is only fair that, having seen it with our own eyes, we are allowed to rule on the appropriate punishment for an assistant in its escape.”
The Tsaritsa nodded again. Approval. Dottore pouted and slumped a little bit in his chair.
Pierro, the only member permitted to speak without requesting to do so, looked up from his meeting notes.
“Then it is settled. We will rule on this as a council. To start, let us see… Who here has an emotional involvement in the issue at hand?”
All of the members, including the currently-being-interrogated Tartaglia, raised their hands. Pierro took a tally on the sheet of paper he was taking notes on.
“Good. And who would like to speak on the matter?”
Columbina’s hand rose, as did Pantalone’s.
“Excellent. Columbina.”
Columbina sighed. “This is a matter that is most dull, Dottore. What does it matter if one experiment escapes? You possess the facilities required to make another.”
Around the room, collective grunts of agreement. This meeting was unnecessary, to say the least. The other harbingers, while fascinated by Dottore’s latest “thing,” had other issues to attend to. Important meetings, their own wards, government takedown plots. Or, in Pantalone’s case, more economic pursuits.
“It’s unfathomable that an asset as valuable as this should go missing. Who unlocked its cage? Who carried it out of the laboratory without being detected in the process? Who successfully disguised its appendages and appearance?”
Again, collective agreement. It was unbelievable that the “asset,” as Pantalone had so lovingly called it, had escaped. Without any signs of struggle. Without being caught by one of Dottore’s hundreds of assistants. Without dying in the frozen wasteland surrounding Zapolyarny Palace.
“In my humble opinion, that thing was wonderfully marketable. A classic oddity. Something my friends and I would refer to as a ‘business opportunity.’”
Pantalone shook his head. “I won’t allow this. Tartaglia, if you were responsible for the disappearance, I will hold you accountable. My friends and I” – with this, he reached into his coat pocket – “Have drawn up a mathematical calculation for what financial costs may be associated with the loss of this creature. Any losses — either at Dottore’s expense or at the financial sector’s at large — will be paid. To me.”
“Now I don’t believe that that’s fair,” Sandrone said aloud, her voice strained.
Pierro held up a hand. Sandrone had not asked for the Tsaritsa’s permission to speak.
“Your Highness, if I may,” she restarted.
The Tsaritsa nodded.
“You don’t know what profits could be reaped from this ‘creature’ until you attempt to use it for money. Which has not happened yet. And we are all aware that Tartaglia cannot afford whatever debts you are attempting to place on him. He is no friend of mine, but I will not stand for this. His money is already funding many other lives besides his. To strip him of it, for a creation that we are not even sure could survive past its current lifespan and actually be utilized for profit, is unjust.”
Tartaglia felt something within him stirring. What right did she have, to speak on his family? What ride did anyone have?
The Tsaritsa, as if gauging his preparedness to butt in, waved her hand once. With that, the meeting was drawn into a recess.
She beckoned him forward with a wave of her wrist.
Tartaglia approached cautiously, his hands tucked behind his back neatly. Here was the moment of truth. Meeting recesses were rarely resumed. Once the Tsaritsa had spoken with the individual who was being interrogated, answers would surface, and most lines of questioning would then become irrelevant.
“Were you responsible for the escape of Dottore’s experiment?”
The room fell silent.
Tartaglia swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing weakly in his throat. He licked his lips, the dryness palpable against his damp tongue.
He kneeled to the ground, angled his head toward the floor in a symbol of deference. If he could not save himself from absolution through innocence, he would do so through submission.
“Yes.”
– – –
Diluc leaned against a living room chair gingerly with the side of one of his shoulders. A bowl of some sort of stew was nestled in his clasped hands, warming the sandpapery skin of his icy palms. Even after warming himself in front of the fire for hours, covered in layer after layer of sable furs, his hands had stubbornly refused to warm up.
Around him, the family slowed down. Member after member shuffled off to bed, the lights that had emanated from each of their rooms now blown out, their doors closing softly behind them as if they had collectively chosen not to offend an unspoken rule of silence.
The matriarch of the house had refused to go to sleep. She sat attentively at her new guest’s feet, waiting for him to finish a bowl of her finest homemade borscht. It had been a long time since she’d had any company at all (at least, this was what she’d told Diluc), and the anticipation in her eyes was intense.
“Are you injured?”
Diluc nodded once, as he took a spoonful of the soup into his mouth. The taste was unfamiliar and yet nostalgic, as if he’d been eating it throughout the entirety of his childhood. While he’d never tasted the soup’s exact flavor, the motherly touch that had once graced the meals of his youth felt almost exactly the same. How fascinating it was, that a mother’s love could translate into similarity even across national and linguistic boundaries.
“Would you like for me to tend to your wounds? I used to do that for Ajax all the time when he was little. That boy is so reckless…”
She assumed that same, glazed-over expression Tonia had earlier that evening.
“Is that his name? Ajax?”
Diluc took another spoonful of the stew, chewed slowly. He’d never known the name of his savior. The man’s identity, of course, was no secret. But his name? That was a rare tidbit, a piece of information so invaluable that most would never know of it in their lifetime. If he’d been the version of himself from before, this fact would have excited him. Now it just made him feel even more exhausted.
Ajax’s mother looked up. Gauged Diluc’s sunken-in cheeks, wide red eyes, dirt-smeared flesh.
“It is.”
Diluc’s head lolled over the bowl of soup. He allowed himself to take another, albeit smaller, bite. Again, nostalgia. The power food had over the soul, tangibly incarnate in him.
“Where are your wounds?”
Diluc turned around and bared his covered back at her. At this point, he didn’t feel much shame or awkwardness between him and this woman. She’d fed him, warmed him by the fire, kept him company through the long hours of the night.
Slowly, he separated himself from the soup and began to peel off layer after layer of clothing. First, the sable furs. Then, the thick, down jacket. Then, one fleece shirt. Another. And, finally, the clothes he’d been forced to wear before his escape.
Diluc heard Ajax’s mother gasp loudly.
“Sweetheart… Darling… Are you aware that you have…”
He felt a hand tentatively brush the appendages attached to his shoulder blades. His face flushed with humiliation, at the thought of what she was currently seeing. How bloodied was he? How bruised?
“Are you aware that you have wings?”
Diluc certainly was. The ropes that had bound them to his back had been digging into him throughout the entire trek from the north of Snezhnaya to Morepesok. And now, for the first time in well over a week, he was able to untie it.
– – –
Thanks to his prostrating before the Tsaritsa, Tartaglia was in the clear. There weren’t many appropriate punishments that could be given out for the vanishing of a laboratory experiment. After all, they didn’t even know where the thing was. (Save for Tartaglia, who definitely and unfortunately knew exactly where it was headed, if it survived.)
The Tsaritsa was avidly against Dottore torturing one of her harbingers. None of the harbingers were in support of him becoming a new laboratory experiment or finding a new laboratory experiment, either. Maybe it was better that that thing wasn’t present for Dottore to torture anymore. Maybe all of the harbingers save for him had that sentiment in common.
In the end, the Tsaritsa decided to send Tartaglia home to Morepesok, for “reflection time.” As a consequence of this, he’d be without his massive paycheck for a span of three months. During that time, while he grappled to find the funds needed to support his family, he was to reflect on what it “meant” to be a Fatui harbinger. This situation was, honestly, worse than anything Dottore could have imagined for him. No twisted fantasy could defeat a cold and brutal reality.
What was he to tell his little siblings and aging parents, when he returned home and admitted that he was temporarily unable to feed or support them?
In any case, Tartaglia (or, now, Ajax) was headed home for the season, the bitter taste of his failure curled up by his family’s fireplace, its wounds being treated by his mother’s shaking hands.
Maybe a break was exactly what he needed.