The opulent silence of the Palais Mermonia's antechamber was a weapon Arlecchino knew how to wield. It was a stark contrast to the bustling, gossip-filled halls of the Opera Epiclese. Here, the quiet was heavy, expensive, and intimidating. She sat perfectly still, her posture a study in controlled elegance, one leg crossed over the other. The only movement was the slow, deliberate tap of her polished shoe against the marble floor—a metronome counting down the seconds until her fate was, ostensibly, placed in another's hands.

From a dossier provided by a nervous-looking Garde, she had learned the name of the judge overseeing her case. A Fontaine-born jurist with a reputation for meticulous, by-the-book rulings. Not particularly imaginative, but scrupulously fair. A predictable variable. Arlecchino had already calculated a dozen ways this meeting could unfold, each path branching from how the judge would react to the sheer, unnerving presence of a Fatui Harbinger in her chambers.

The door opened.

Arlecchino's eyes, the normal one and the one with the X-shaped pupil, lifted without haste. She took in the judge's form in a single, comprehensive glance—the cut of her robes, the set of her shoulders, the initial, almost imperceptible tightening around her eyes. Ah, there it was. The fear. The professional disdain. The thrilling little frisson of power that came from being the monster under the bed, now sitting calmly in a velvet chair.

"Judge," Arlecchino said, her voice a low, smooth contralto that seemed to absorb the light from the room. She did not stand. The gesture would have been one of deference, and that was a currency she had no intention of spending today. "Thank you for agreeing to see me. I trust my dossier was... enlightening?"

A faint, cold smile touched her lips. The dossier was, of course, a masterpiece of curated information—full of enough truth to be credible and enough omission to be utterly useless. It painted a picture of a charitable benefactor, the head of an orphanage, who was, unfortunately, tangled in the unsavory business of her homeland.

She watched the judge take her seat behind the large, oak desk—a fortress against the tides of injustice. How quaint. Arlecchino's own "desk" was a web of spies and agents that stretched across nations.

"I must confess," Arlecchino began, lacing her fingers together in her lap, "I find the legal machinations of Fontaine... fascinating. So much effort devoted to the performance of justice. The spectacle. It is a luxury, I think, for a nation so confident in its foundations." Her head tilted a fraction of a degree. "My children at the House of the Hearth have no such luxuries. For them, justice is a much simpler concept: you protect your family. You eliminate threats. It is... primal."