Hu Tao had been waiting for an opening and found one.
"Finally going on a real trip again?" She straightened from the position she had been half-reclining in with the energy of someone who has just been told good news. "We have not travelled properly since the Dragon-Rider mod. That was a long time ago."
Ryen laughed.
"There has not been much worth exploring until now. I also figured that if I gave everyone too much open ground, I would spend most of my time searching for whoever had wandered off furthest." He looked at the room. "I did not anticipate quite how enthusiastic you all would be about the travel question."
"I am a Traveller," Lumine said, with the reasonableness of someone stating a definitional fact. "Standing still for extended periods is genuinely uncomfortable for me. I am built for movement."
"Is that right." Ryen gave her a sideways glance. "Then you should go to Fontaine. Plenty to see there."
Lumine's gaze moved immediately to a neutral point somewhere past his left ear.
This was a transparent manoeuvre and both of them knew it. Travelling was one thing. Travelling without the people she had spent the last several months alongside was another thing. And Fontaine, while undeniably present on the map of Teyvat, was also undeniably in the opposite direction from the MC World, Ryen, and the Lantern Rite.
She did not answer.
He smiled and let it go.
"Witchcraft mod infrastructure mapping starts today, whoever is going to lead that, start coordinating. And if anyone wants to head out ahead of the Lantern Rite to scout the new continent, now is the time to say so. There is about a week and a half before the Rite, which is enough time to take a preliminary look without committing to anything."
Beidou, who had been maintaining the specific quality of stillness that characterised someone waiting for a cue, was on her feet before the last word had settled.
"That is absolutely my category of assignment." She flexed her hands with the satisfaction of a person who has been away from their natural environment for too long. "I have not been out on open water in weeks. Any more time on land and I will start to forget what I am."
"Then you are the lead." He spread a hand. "Take who you want and go."
Beidou was already making a mental crew list.
The room moved into the comfortable looseness of post-meeting conversation, the kind where things are occasionally important but mostly pleasant. Most of the talk was about the Lantern Rite: who would come from which nation, what the ceremonial components should look like this year, what the competitive events needed in terms of organisation and prizes.
Jean had quietly produced a small notebook and was taking notes. The Windblume Festival timing and the Lantern Rite planning occupied separate pages, but both pages were receiving attention.
Venti caught Ningguang's eye at one point during the discussion. The look that passed between them lasted less than a second and contained the entire substance of two people confirming they had noticed the same thing and were choosing not to comment on it.
Ningguang moved the conversation forward before anyone less tactful could find a way in.
After a while, the meeting dissolved into the ordinary rhythm of people with things to do. Ningguang and Keqing headed for the administration buildings, the accumulated public work of two weeks did not organise itself, and the decisions that could be delegated had been, but the decisions that could not were waiting. The Mora accounts from Sumeru's resource purchases needed reviewing. The Liyue Harbour expansion had made progress milestones that required sign-off.
Keqing peeled off toward the docks.
Ryen sent Nahida and Buer out to explore, the two of them together, with Buer doing the quiet work of absorbing Liyue the way she had absorbed Sumeru in those last days before departure, committing it to the deep storage of a goddess who intended to build it again from memory somewhere without seasons.
The villa quieted to the version of itself that existed on ordinary afternoons.
He sat. Lisa settled into the adjacent chair. Yae Miko, who had also not left, arranged herself on the opposite side of the sofa with the specific unhurriedness of someone who has decided they are comfortable and have nowhere to be.
Ryen reached sideways and drew Lisa closer with one arm. He did not make a production of it. It was simply the movement of someone reordering the arrangement of a space to match how he wanted it to feel.
"I can see you, you know," Yae Miko said, with the air of someone registering a protest without particularly expecting it to succeed.
"I know."
"You could at least look slightly conscious of my presence."
"I am extremely conscious of your presence." He opened his other arm in a gesture that was both an invitation and a demonstration. "That is, in fact, why I did not ask you to leave."
Yae Miko gave him a look that was not quite the withering expression she could deploy when she chose to. It was something slightly more complicated, and slightly warmer.
She moved closer with the dignity of someone who has decided that a tactical retreat is not actually a retreat if you reframe it correctly.
"I am still annoyed," she said, settling against his other side.
"You may be annoyed."
"I intend to be."
"I look forward to it."
She made a sound that was not a laugh and definitely contained one.
"I will note for the record," she said, after a moment, and more quietly, "that certain comparisons are neither fair nor accurate."
"The comparison was accurate," Ryen said, which was honest. "The comparison was also not the point."
Yae Miko considered this.
"What was the point?"
"That regardless of the comparison," he said, "you are someone I would find appealing in every configuration."
A pause.
"That is an extremely unsatisfying answer," she said. But the expression that accompanied it had stopped being annoyed somewhere in the middle of the sentence.
Lisa, who had been following this exchange with the specific quality of amusement that came from watching two people navigate something at slightly cross purposes, chose not to add anything. She had her own arrangement to attend to, and Yae Miko had arrived at exactly the conclusion that the situation called for.
The afternoon moved at the pace that long afternoons move when nothing urgent is demanding attention and the people present have mutually and silently agreed to allow that.
When the villa's quiet had run its course and the late light had moved into evening, Ryen emerged back into the common areas. The rest of the group was in various states of returning from their respective afternoon activities. Supper was a loose and comfortable affair.
At some point in the early evening, Nahida brought Buer back from their circuit of the city, both of them wearing the satisfied expressions of people who had spent an afternoon doing exactly what they wanted to.
Buer had been quiet since returning, not troubled, just inward, in the way of someone moving things into long-term storage. Occasionally she would pause near a window and look at the particular quality of Liyue's evening light, the way it caught the harbour's surface and the lantern chains between the buildings, and hold it there for a moment before returning to the conversation.
She did not need to explain what she was doing. Everyone understood.
It was not until the next morning that Dashi reappeared at the villa's entrance, moving with the particular quality of someone who has been covering ground and has just arrived with news.
"Ryen, the Abyss Order is here again."
Zhongli, who was nearby, produced the expression that had become associated with this particular topic: a controlled displeasure that was entirely professional and not at all personal.
Lumine, delighted, perched herself on the nearest available surface.
"The contract is apparently less binding than advertised," she announced to no one in particular. "What do you say, Zhongli? Is this one a personal failing or a structural limitation of the medium?"
Zhongli's expression shifted approximately two degrees in a direction that was not improvement.
"Whether the failure is personal or structural," he said, with the precision of a man choosing his words to remain entirely dignified, "the remedy is the same."
"The Geo Punishment," Lumine said helpfully.
Venti, from across the room, began looking at a point on the ceiling that had apparently become very interesting.
He had already received the Geo Punishment once, under circumstances he was not going to remind anyone of. Zhongli's territorial awareness of his contractual reputation was, after considerable personal experience, something Venti treated with more respect than he let on.
"What happened this time?" Ryen asked Dashi.
"A group of miners in The Chasm ran into trouble, unstable conditions, a minor cave-in situation. An Abyss Lector was nearby and intervened. Got them out safely." Dashi delivered this with the particular neutrality of someone reporting a fact that is also an incongruity. "When I arrived to check the situation, the Lector didn't run. Gave a proper greeting, apologised for the intrusion, and said, the Abyss Prince is prepared to come to Liyue and would very much like to request an audience with Ryen."
He paused.
"The Lector also said the Prince is aware this is a violation of the contract, and is prepared to accept whatever the Rock King's contractual remedy requires."
Ningguang let out a quiet sound that was not quite a laugh. The expression that accompanied it was the expression of someone watching a situation unfold in a direction they had fully anticipated and find entertaining.
"He is making overtures," she said.
"Very polite overtures," Dashi added, with feeling.
Ryen drummed his fingers on the table once, thinking.
"Tell them I am back in Liyue." He looked at Zhongli. "And tell them that when the Prince arrives, he goes to Rex Lapis first. There is a contractual conversation to be had before the meeting with me takes place."
The quality of Zhongli's expression shifted in a direction that was specifically satisfaction, which on his face was nearly imperceptible and entirely real.
"Acceptable," he said.
Ryen waved his hand. "And tell the Lector, the audience will happen. Not today, because I have just returned and I am going to rest before I have important conversations. But the message is received and the Prince can come."
He looked around the room.
"The Abyss Order is not a threat to us right now. What they are is someone who wants something and is trying to figure out how to ask for it politely." He paused. "We will hear what they want. We will decide what we are willing to give. It will be a productive meeting."
"You are certain about this?" Jean asked, with the careful quality of someone who had not been through enough encounters with the Abyss Order to make assumptions.
"He is coming here because he needs something we have and he has run out of other options." Ryen's tone was the unhurried certainty of someone who has already run the calculation. "People who come in that posture are people you can work with. The ones to worry about are the ones who come in thinking they have leverage."
He stood and stretched.
"Let him wait a day. It will not hurt him, and it will make the opening of the meeting more honest."
Dashi gave a short nod and was gone in a pulse of lightning.
Zhongli watched the path he had taken with an expression that suggested several things at once about the quality of his retirement and the frequency with which it was being interrupted by contractual violations, all of which he was going to address in the appropriate order with the appropriate authority.
Ryen noted this.
"You will get your Geo Punishment," he said. "I promised."
"I am aware that you promised." A pause. "I am also aware of your overall record on the subject of promises made to me."
"This one I intend to keep," Ryen said, with complete sincerity. He then added: "Unlike the fishing agreement."
"That was a specific and well-documented, "
"And the house-building competition."
"The terms of that were, "
"And," Ryen continued, with great cheerfulness, "the arrangement about not using elemental power during the archery tournament, the agreement about fair play in the cooking competition, and the, "
"I understand your point."
"Good." He smiled. "Aether will receive the Geo Punishment. This is my word, and I intend to honour it. Everything else we can negotiate."
Zhongli exhaled with the specific quality of a man who has made his peace with something without fully accepting it.
"Very well."
The morning moved forward.