Chapter Text
Naku weed flashes under the second-thin slices of lightning, waving fronds bright as polished metal. Signora watches the moisture slick off the edges, drop from the precipice of the acute knife point end. Steam is coiling off her ceramic teacup, disappearing into the haze of the anonymous afternoon storm.
“Aren’t you going to drink?”
The woman beside her is quiet. Porcelain ( stone ), the soft edges of her profile disguising the blunt hardness underneath. A statue, strong enough to shatter the suggestion of those too-malleable blades. Signora feels the twitching of a challenge in her fingers, the startled fringes of a laugh.
That pathetic resistance doesn’t stand a chance.
Silence weaves through the rain and Signora shrugs. “Suit yourself.”
She lifts the cup to her lips and the liquor goes down smooth; a gentle heat, the slick sweetness of plum wine. It’s soothing in a strange way, smothers the sizzle that waits, undisciplined, beneath her skin.
It’s good.
“Why have you asked me here?” The words break through, more jarring than the thunder. Signora doesn't so much as shift.
“Is it so unbelievable that I would simply enjoy the hospitality of my host?”
“I am no one’s host.”
“I am in the presence of this nation’s archon. I can hardly think what else to call you.”
Baal’s gaze (or what little of it she can see, from the corner of her eye) is severe, displaced. The archon remains too-upright and stoic, her face turned towards the harsh split of the sky. The twin to Signora's teacup sits pretty on the table beside her. Empty.
Signora keeps the cool rim against her lips, content to let the storm punctuate their silence. Baal does not break it. Well. An archon for eternity — she has, if nothing else, an offensive glut of time.
Rain scatters against the ground like cast off pearls, drops rolling to a stop just before the toe of her newly-polished heels.
Inazuma is not what she’d expected.
Weather batters the landscape before them. Forceful and slighted, precipitation hurled against the ground with a natural vengeance. Grass roils and rollicks in waves — the surface of an unsteady sea. Boughs bending, leaves lashed against the trunk. In the sharp relief of lightning the silhouettes are transformed into the shadows of a different scene. Signora remembers the voyage over, the long days on the water; ships and sailing, the chop of water breaching up along the hull, the splash, the salty sting. Constant motion, the world in fluctuation. The pivotal transition before reaching transformed shores.
She would think that the sight would be unpleasant.
“It’s very lovely," she murmurs. Too soft to be heard beneath the next clap of the sky.
It doesn't matter. “What.”
Signora wants to laugh.
“The storm.”
Baal doesn’t make any noise, but there’s a twitching in her jaw. The smooth cut of bone, white and silken, trembling like the prelude to an avalanche. But she doesn’t crumble.
Of course. Naturally no pressure could ever crack an archon.
“Feel free to go out and enjoy it, then.”
There’s a little tug at the corner of Signora’s mouth as she bites down on her amusement. Bitch. She already likes her better.
“It would be a shame to waste such a delicious drink.” The liquor clings, sticky sweet, to her bottom lip. “And even lovelier company.”
The world is drowned in a new wave of splashing rain, absorbs the flicker of an already dying conversation. But this time, she swears she can hear the scoff.
The first time she stepped on the weather-buckled pier, Signora had surveyed the low roofs, the assembly of close buildings, and thought. Ah. This must be my punishment.
It was beautiful, perhaps, in a quaintly ordered way. All wood and stone and the drifting scent of some flower, petals scattered at her feet. Liyue's distant cousin, more compact than those sprawling mountain vistas. An archon already left behind, deprived amenably of his gnosis (and gifted disordered carnage for the trouble). Neat and clean, without even the burden of the cleanup.
Frankly she had thought it a rather elegant solution.
It was her gift, perhaps. Ruthless efficiency, the wicked edge of understanding. That scalpel precision that Dottore held, wielded in her more graceful fists. Diplomacy married with subterfuge to create something entirely different.
All arranged and manipulated nearly to an art.
She had left Tartaglia behind in the end; disgustingly disheartened. All slouching posture compressing his too-tall frame, arms listless even if his blade retained that wicked sharpness. Bad for morale, honestly. Undeserving of his title.
And she had been dispatched again. Again, again, again, on the next mission to collect another gnosis; an unprecedented sign of trust.
Sent far away from the cold palaces of her beloved archon.
Signora had taken the briefest glance around and then bundled herself into a surprisingly well-constructed palanquin, had allowed her subordinates to look after their luggage and supplies. Had been conveyed with all appropriate care and grace to a small inn on Narakumi island, surrounded by her doting Fatui and the promise of tomorrow. The first thing she’d wanted to do was take a nap.
Instead she’d sat, the whole of the island spread out beyond her lacquered wood-paneled window, the setting sun melting the soft tops of vegetation into dripping liquid gold. The tea that had been brought for her waited on the sill. Untouched.
It took her three weeks to get a glimpse of the archon.
Baal, they called her, syllable parceled in hushed whispers, compressed beneath the equal weights of awe and fear. Signora listened, dampened the sharp clack of her heels on stone to pick out the finer points of drifting conversation. This was not the name her Tsaritsa gave her, and she considered, turned the moniker over and over in her mind, the lap of her thoughts rounding it down until it ran smooth. Interesting. She'd leaned over a merchant stall, picked at some silk-worked brocade and thought about how lovely this colour would look against her Tsaritsa’s skin.
She bought the bolt and left, arms empty and unsatisfied.
Of course, her first sighting would bring with it the Traveller.
It wasn't so much chance as a calculated gamble. Quick; a gust of anemo, that startling flash of wind. Blonde hair floating around a cherubic face. Signora had watched with amusement from her high vantage, one gloved forearm just enough inside the window not to catch the sun. Typical of them, to involve themselves in a stranger’s mess. And naturally then, the archon, drawn into the inevitable gravity of this alien interloper. The electro monarch floating down impossibly, soundlessly, on wooden heels. The long braid of her dark hair ribboned outwards behind a petite back and Signora thought of the difference between a sky full of lightning and a sky full of snow, and the way they both end up blinding.
She'd turned away at the startlingly brief conclusion to the fight, documents spread out, unread, on the table before her. When she tried to parse the unnecessarily dense text of her associates, the ink bled from black to purple.
“You’re back.”
It’s decidedly not a welcome, and harsh enough that she can’t melt it into something softer. Signora crosses her arms over her chest, watches that impassive, lovely face. Baal is reclined on her throne like a god. Like an idol.
Like an obelisk.
“What can I say? I missed your company.” She smiles, sharp challenge.
The archon does not rise to her bait.
It’s strange, to be back here again. When the first time they’d met had been in strictly official capacity; first contact after arrival, establishing her presence. Her legitimacy. Signora felt like a beacon then, a brightness in that tall, dim space. A candle illuminating some undiscovered darkness.
The tatami mats had felt strange beneath her heels. She remembers missing the interrogative of her regular, sharp echo.
“It is my most gracious pleasure to meet you, steadfast Steward of Eternity.”
The woman — (not quite a woman, not really, but then. Signora would know all about that) — had inclined her head, had said nothing. But that had been fine. Signora had learned to work with less. (And it was infinitely preferable to the alternative).
She remembers this, too. The smile she’d used, cousin to the real thing — all soft lips and slight curves. No teeth, no further flash of brightness. And then. The muted thrum of electricity, an arc of power that had crossed the stagnant air of that silent room, had carried a quivering charge, aiming to strike her in the chest. Invisible and soundless; so subtle it could have been imagined.
No matter. Signora has practiced at deflecting the electro of a more trigger-happy beast.
It had seemed foolish, then, to bow. To show the curve of her neck, that vulnerable slice of meat. Instead she had crossed her arms over her waist and felt amusement licking up her throat like the rising scrape of flame.
“I look forward to working with you.”
And the archon had said nothing.
Signora approaches, now. Caution has given way to confidence, or to restlessness, maybe. More than a month in this miserable country and she is starting to understand that incessant energy that radiates off Tartaglia on any given day, that has him bouncing on the balls of his feet and flashing off at every opportunity, looking, searching, scouring for avenues to release it.
Signora picks her battles with a more discerning eye.
She doesn’t stop at the requisite distance from the throne. Keeps going, brushing past known etiquette, the tatami mats chewed up beneath her heels, the archon shrinking from a distant legend to too convincing a facsimile of flesh and blood. She is flayed by that impassive gaze and she only smiles, a mirror to two or more weeks ago. The clay bottle she hoists in one gloved hand, the impression of the wax seal indistinct in the too-dim light.
“Care to join me for a drink?”
She’d been more prepared for a no.
Still, she will welcome an unexpected victory. Baal slips from her seat with a too-perfect grace; only the slightest pretense of something like humanity. That braid ripples behind her, a shadowed river, and Signora tracks the weightless sway.