Harika arrives at work after the weekend and finds herself herded, along with everyone else, through unfamiliar parts of the building, into an airy, high-ceilinged meeting room more suited to public consultations than — whatever this is.
This is out of the ordinary, and in Harri's experience that's never good.
It becomes obvious that people arriving for work are being put into rooms like this to wait, taken out one at a time — people have caught the word interview, and muttered it around with dire speculation — and whatever the purpose or outcome, are being put elsewhere afterward.
"It's the paperclip inquisition," drawls Sharden from Harri's corridor. "Got to chase down those budget problems, you know."
Harri sighs and starts drafting today's reports in her head.
Eventually, it's her own turn, and she clutches her handbag and stoically follows one of the unfamiliar clerks ushering people to and fro to one of the downstairs offices, which has evidently been taken over for the purpose; sits herself on the interviewee side of the desk, as directed, bag on her lap, and tries not to look nervous. There's a serious man in a cheap suit on the other side of the desk, and another silently taking notes in the corner.
Auditors, Harri thinks, and answers some factual questions about her work, and her department in general. It all sounds extremely routine, which the whole thing most definitely isn't; perhaps her answers aren't important, or only as cross-checks on other peoples', or the bulk of the massive operation is a smokescreen to prevent its specific targets from immediately concluding they've been found out, and knowing to shred documents or muddy the blame.
It's not until after she's directed out, to follow the clerk away to whatever other quarantine area prevents people from comparing before-and-after notes, that the morning's general air of anxiety begins to crystallise into something more specific.
"Harika Lee?" someone else says, in a less-cheap suit. Harri has a sinking feeling that they're vaguely familiar, in the way people are when you've seen them repeatedly in the distance doing a more-important, more-public job than yours. Someone from the junior, nuts-and-bolts layer of the mayor's staff. "I'll take her. This way, please."
The personal touch, during an audit, is not something you want to experience.
Harri dutifully follows, is waved into yet another commandeered office. "Sit, it'll be just a minute," her chaperone says, and whisks off in the way of someone with six things scheduled at once, all day long. Harri sits.
It's not altogether a surprise — it makes her stomach drop and her hands tighten on her bag, but not a surprise — when Vespidine walks through the door a while later. The elf looks rumpled and exhausted, clutching a cup of ersatz coffee substitute, which is the only coffee since the End.
Vespidine falls into the chair behind the desk, screws her eyes closed, and gulps coffee satz with an expression that says it's not because she enjoys the taste. She stays just like that for a minute, eyes unopened.
"I suppose," she says finally, voice hoarse, "that you'll say I could have done something about it all along, being who I am," and she opens her eyes finally to look blearily at Harri. "And I suppose I could, in a high elven off with their heads! way."
Harri doesn't say anything.
"There's a difference," Vespidine says, "between knowing there's corruption in City Hall in an oh of course everyone knows that way, and having a documented starting point from...an anonymous whistleblower."
There doesn't seem to be anything safe to say, so, "You look tired," Harri says stupidly, instead.
"I read your report after you left it with me," Vespidine says. "And I had some questions, I imagine many of the same ones you've had, about the process of turning down a clear case for public health expenditure, costed and self-justifying, over...some of the other purposes the budget has been put to. So I came in and, I'm afraid, I went through some of your filing as a starting point."
Harri shrugs as best she can, with her shoulders pulled in on themselves. "You work for the mayor," she says, in as matter-of-fact a dismissal as she can manage. Of course Vespidine can read whatever files she wants.
"I brought the audit team in the following morning," Vespidine says, scrubs at her eyes and blinks a few times. "I've been catching what sleep I can on the couch in my office, over in the other wing. I'm rather looking forward to going home this afternoon, after several senior administrators are dismissed and escorted from the building."
Harri looks at the handbag in her lap.
"Well," she says. Clears her throat a little. "...I suppose I'm well and truly bought, then, for this."
Vespidine covers her face with her hands. "Don't say that, Harika," she says through them. "You had concerns, you were denied through the proper channels, you blew the whistle and this is how that's supposed to be handled."
"It wouldn't have been," Harri tells her handbag. "Would it? You wouldn't have spent all weekend in the office if anyone else had said it. This is all because I'm Vespidine korvu by-Tenstone korvu Overmore kanru Tjenwater's indecorosa."
"It's one day," Vespidine says, voice cracking. "It's one day, it's her wedding and that's all. You never have to speak to me again."
"Everyone else is sitting quarantined in a conference room, with no idea what's going on and scared of what's happening," Harri says. "I'm getting special treatment right now."
The elf sits quiet, hands still over her face, for a while.
"I don't know how to make anything less awful, Harri," she says, finally. "I'm sorry, I don't. I'll have someone take you where everyone else is."
Harri nods and stands quietly while Vespidine opens the door and says something quietly, then follows an aide away, is shown to a conference room full of anxious post-interview colleagues, finds Sharden and gratefully sits with a familiar face.
"Do you think they'll let us out for lunch before they have us all hanged?" Sharden jokes cheerily, and Harri smiles wanly and shrugs.
Much later, a tepid ambient apology has been wafted for the disruption, and they've been laughably commanded to return to their day as usual, and everyone has done or pretended to do what work they can for the remainder of their day; slowly piecing together whatever narrative of events that they care to, and it comes time to go home.
Harri pulls on her jacket, picks up her bag, then puts it on her desk and sits back down. She puts her own face in her hands, and lets her mind wander to what it's been trying to, ever since: Vespidine, a classical statue of woe, her exhaustion-roughened voice curling around, not three formal syllables, but two: Harri.
Harri feels starved for any affection that's neither Cosimisa's, nor walled away from her by the venomous jellyfish-tendril curtain of Cosimisa's possessiveness. Vespidine, of all people; and to feel any softness at all for her because the elf sounded sad. Poor little princess, indeed.
Harri feels weak; and so, so stupid.
