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“Are you ready?”
“Noooooo,” said Columbina, fidgeting in her seat.
“Your tea is ready, have a—”
“I don’t want tea, Jester, I want to not have to do this.”
Pierro sighed, and said—not to her: the timbre of his voice changed when he wasn’t facing her directly—“Someone get the poor girl some khvorost and berries. Yes, you. Go.”
Footsteps scurried away. Pierro returned his attention to Columbina.
“Let’s at least try to make this as enjoyable as possible.”
“You say that every year,” Columbina grumbled.
“Come on. Let’s start with the basics.”
Columbina recited from memory: “This is our yearly ontology check. We have never skipped this protocol since it began, a year after I joined. We have never detected anything anomalous via this protocol. You suck and I hate you.”
(That last line might have been improvised.)
“Thank you, Damselette. Now...”
Pierro paused as a servant appeared carrying plates of sweet pastries and—Columbina inhaled—ah, delicious: fresh berry compote.
She tugged the plates towards her where Pierro couldn’t steal any, and motioned for him to continue.
“See?” said Pierro. “Much more pleasant now. Tell me of the Descenders that we’re aware of.”
“Seven, all still present on Teyvat. One, the Heavenly Principles, also known...”
Answering in between little bites of khvorost, Columbina ran through the list without much thought. It rarely changed year to year.
“Next question,” said Pierro. “Name the nations and civilisations of Teyvat.”
Columbina continued on autopilot: “Presently, the Seven Nations: Snezhnaya, Fontaine, Liyue, Inazuma, Sumeru, Natlan, and Mondstadt, each overseen by one of seven Archons. The nation of Khaenri’ah, destroyed five hundred years ago. Byakuyakoku, destroyed, succeeded by the Watatsumi Island peoples. Nameless civilisation recorded on Tsurumi Island. Nameless civilisation having built Celestia. Nameless civilisation associated with the Goddess of Flowers, Sumeru...”
So boring. Columbina understood perfectly well that her memory was an important Fatui asset, one of their safeguards against Leyline and Irminsul tampering, but going through this same song and dance every year was excruciatingly repetitive.
At least this was the short questionnaire. The bigger one she did every decade took half a week to get through, and every time, Columbina found herself sorely tempted to murder Pierro by the end of it.
The questions continued. Describe our three current strategic priorities. Describe the overarching purpose of the Gnosis operation. Explain the Tsaritsa’s vision for peace. Recite last year’s Most Wanted list. What is Pantalone’s Ten Year Plan?
Finally, finally, they were done.
“See?” said Pierro gently. “That wasn’t so bad.”
“It’s torture.” Columbina pouted. “I hate this.”
“We all must make sacrifices,” said Pierro drily. “At least your entire life isn’t paperwork, little Dove.”
“I bet you’re not this mean to the other eight.”
“The other seven,” Pierro corrected her. His chair scraped noisily against the ground as he stood. “We lost Rosalyne, remember?”
“Oh, right.”
Wait. Wait, no, she’d accounted for that.
Columbina exhaled through her teeth.
Pierro paused, having only taken a single step away. “Problem?”
“Eleven Harbingers,” said Columbina. “Minus the two of us, minus Rosalyne, makes eight. Unless you’re writing off the Sixth...?”
“Why wouldn’t I? We haven’t had a Sixth Harbinger in over a century. The Tsaritsa requested the spot be left vacant when the last one died.”
Oh. That sounded like a problem.
“We have a Sixth Harbinger,” said Columbina. “Scaramouche, the Balladeer. He’s been with us for nearly four hundred years.”
There was a long pause, during which she couldn’t so much as hear the Jester breathe.
Then he sighed tiredly and sat back down.
“Alright,” he said. “This is a code black. Tell me everything you remember about a sixth Harbinger. Just as soon as...” He snapped his fingers. “You! Get a scribe from Pulcinella’s office, and have them bring the Dove Protocol 3A forms.”
Columbina grimaced. This was going to take hours, and she suspected her voice would end up worse for wear.
“I want honey lemon tea,” she said, loudly enough that one of her attendants would hear. “Or whatever Pantalone gave me for my throat last time.”
A curt “yes’m” and footsteps scuffled off in the direction of the nearest kitchen.
“Alright,” said Pierro. “While we wait for the scribe, tell me: what active operations was this Scaramouche involved in?”
“A month ago, Dottore reported that the Sixth was assisting in Sumeru...” began Columbina.
“We misplaced a Harbinger!?”
“Irminsul tampering is a little more serious than merely losing something,” Dottore said. “When information is removed from Irminsul, history—that is, recorded history—rewrites itself to omit all mention of said data. We didn’t so much misplace the sixth Harbinger as we’ve been rendered incapable of recalling her existence. All of us except Columbina, of course.”
“Still. We forgot about a Harbinger!?”
Tartaglia’s penchant for stating the obvious was rather adorable. Columbina patted him on the head.
“Columbina said Scaramouche was— or is— a ‘he’,” said Pierro.
“How was I supposed to know that?” snapped Dottore.
“Perhaps,” said Pulcinella, “if you had read the summary on the first page instead of jumping straight to the section about puppet construction—”
“Easy, now,” said Pantalone. “It’s been a tough few months for our good Doctor, you know that.”
“Of course you’d jump to his defence—”
“Circus,” scoffed Sandrone. “This is a fucking circus.”
It was seven of them around the table, with Capitano and Arlecchino off on business elsewhere, and Scaramouche apparently having vanished off the face of the world. Seven, plus the Tsaritsa, who had not spoken a word, but who sat at the head of the table, the ambient drop in temperature giving Columbina frostbite at the toes. Ugh, of course Her Majesty turned up the one day Columbina hadn’t double layered her socks.
“So how was he involved in the Sumeru operation, exactly?” said Dottore.
“How would I know?” Columbina threw her hands up. “You’re always so secretive about your experiments. All you said was he was a critical component of your plans and that you, quote, had it all under control.”
“Well, I did.”
“If you didn’t,” interjected Tartaglia, “we’ll never know now, will we?”
The arguing started again. Columbina tuned it out and sank into her chair, exhausted.
Their running theory was: a Harbinger had been involved in Dottore’s God-Machine project. They’d been captured, interrogated, and then Buer had deleted all trace of them from the Leylines to weaken the Fatui.
“But why erase him?” said Tartaglia. “How is that worth the effort to her?”
“He could have done something she wanted to cover up,” suggested Pantalone. “Developed a hidden weapon for us...?”
“Nothing I’ve heard of,” said Columbina. “He spent several centuries in the Abyss, mostly doing scouting work.”
“...and if it was just an ordinary secret, why not just kill him?” said Tartaglia.
A thought occurred to Columbina.
“Does Buer know I’m a Descender?” she said. “If so, maybe this was a show of power. Making it clear that even without her Gnosis, she’s still just as formidable as Stolas, perhaps even more.”
The table lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.
Oh no. Please not more interviews. Her throat was sore from all the talking.
“You’re messing with me,” she said hopefully. “Stolas, Lord of Verdure? Aranyani of the Boscage? Buer’s predecessor?”
“That clever little devil,” said Her Majesty almost admiringly, and Columbina’s heart sank. “No wonder her tactics have changed: we’re dealing with a different person.”
“Columbina,” said Pierro, “give me a minute to fetch a scribe. Then, I need you to tell us everything you recall about—”
Fuck this. Columbina scrambled out of her chair and ran for it.