Underkeeper

“I would hire a professional if I were you.” Kustov said with a shrug. “There’s really no way around it. An improperly installed door is a nightmare – the kind of minor nuisance that will ruin your peace of mind just a little more every day. Don’t worry too much about the cost. You can save on the furniture if you practice your stone shaping – tables, shelves, a stove, a broad bench along a wall for a bed. You can make all of that stuff yourself, just as long as you pad the seats and the bed properly. Maybe some decorations, shaped right into the stonework on the outside. It’ll be a good exercise for you. You can be a pyromancer all you want, but a mage living underground should at least have passing competency at geomancy.”

Bernt sat across from the dwarf in the break room, sipping on a cup of hot tea. Within the past day, someone had found the time to move a few tables and chairs of various heights and sizes in, and now several of the new underkeepers sat scattered around the tables, awaiting their assignments. There was a small kitchen in one corner with running water and a stove, though there was nothing to light it with. One of the goblins, a cheerful older woman named Lin who wore a broad belt hung with an uncountable number of pouches of various sizes, had brought in a bag of some kind of herbal tea. Curious to try it, Kustov had helpfully shaped a large teapot and an entire cupboard's worth of cups directly out of the wall. After that, they'd just needed to heat the water, and Bernt could handle that easily enough.

Jori, as far as Bernt could sense, was already on the surface to pick up her interns. They were on a regular schedule and would be going to clear out the grates at street level in the Upper District today. Today was actually Bernt’s day off, but he'd come into the new Underkeepers’ Headquarters anyway. He still had a few hours until his appointment at the Mages’ Guild and an entire empty stone shell of a home to make livable. Not knowing where to start, he’d decided to swallow his pride and go looking for advice. Kustov, as it turned out, was not only knowledgeable, but also happy to chat about what was clearly one of his personal interests.

He was learning that homeownership, while solving the rent issue, came with a whole host of other problems to solve and things to pay for.

“Uh. I’m not sure I can do that kind of stoneshaping.” he admitted, feeling more than a little embarrassed at the fact. “Do you think you might be able to help me out?”

“No, no,” Kustov chuckled cheerfully. “I’d be cheating you out of an important learning opportunity. Learning for its own sake is boring, and here you’ve got yourself some excellent motivation to get better in an area of magecraft that you’ve previously neglected. It would be rude to take that away. Just start with the easy stuff. A bench for a bed, a shelf, that sort of thing.”

“Motivation…” Bernt grumbled a little grudgingly. “I suppose. I’m still going to start with the door, though.” It just didn’t feel right to sleep somewhere that he couldn’t close up properly. It made him feel exposed, like he was camping in a construction site.

“Do you know any decent carpenters?”

–--------

Two hours later, Bernt walked into the front office of the Mage’s Guild. It was a tall building, a squat tower that sat straddling the corner where the Upper, Temple, and Lower Districts met and overlooked the Mage Academy.

The Guild housed offices for various functionaries within the guild structure, overseeing the professional activities of mages all over the region. There were offices for agricultural water management, construction, dungeon security and containment, scrying services, warding, arcane research, and a few more that he couldn’t remember off the top of his head. Anyone who wanted to sell their services to citizens on the open market or publish any research had to do so as a guild member and in accordance with guild standards – unless they were working for the government or another powerful entity like the Adventurers’ Guild.

The front desk was manned by a thin, balding man who was busily duplicating forms or memos of some kind or another. The originals were written on a flexible cardstock, which was thick enough that the mages’ duplication cantrip left two normal-looking paper copies.

Bernt walked up to him and waited for a moment, but the man didn’t appear to notice him. He picked up a stack of copies and held it out next to him. Two little hands reached up from behind the desk, accepting the stack, and Bernt just barely caught a glimpse of a knee-high monkey as it carried them off into a room behind the clerk – probably where they kept their records.

It was the first time he’d seen another mage’s familiar since his academy days. Familiars had fallen out of fashion a generation or two earlier, though Bernt never really understood why. None of the underkeepers had one, so far as he knew.

Not sure what to do, Bernt stood there awkwardly for a moment and looked around. If he hadn’t lost his apartment down by the docks, he might have used his savings to finally buy a guild license. Guild mages rarely went into pyromancy, but that didn’t mean there was no work to be found. A pyromancer and a geomancer working together could, for example, single-handedly replace an entire city’s brickworks, firing and glazing roof tiles, bricks and pottery more quickly and evenly than any natural fire.

Bernt made a face at the thought of firing clay all day, every day. Sure, it was a lot safer than sewer work and not nearly so smelly, but there was a reason most cities didn’t have a mage-dominated brick industry. Some things were just too boring to consider.

“Ahem. Can I help you?”

Bernt started and looked back toward the desk. The secretary was giving him a skeptical stare that suggested that whatever reason had brought him in here had better be good. Right. The status of the Underkeepers might be shifting somewhat in the city in general, but that would hardly concern the Mages’ Guild. Their order’s history alone marked them as the dregs of their profession and it would take more than a few new responsibilities to change that.

Now that he really thought about it, it was remarkable that the Underkeepers enjoyed so much formal support from Archmage Iriala and the guild, even considering that she and Ed were personal friends. That had to be causing some real tension within the guild itself.

“Uh, yes. I have an appointment with Archmage Iriala…”

The man’s skepticism visibly deepend at his words.

“Name?”

“Underkeeper Bernard” Bernt said calmly, doing his best to pretend that he didn’t notice the man’s attitude.

“Ah, the warlock.”

Bernt took a breath to refute the statement, but then just let it out in a soft, resigned sigh. What was the point? Nothing that he said here was going to get this man’s respect. And what exactly did he need that for, anyway?

“Which way is it?” he asked shortly.

“Stairs on your left to the third floor, then all the way down the hall to your right.” The secretary said, as he marked something down on a clipboard that he had sitting in front of him and turned back to his paperwork. “You can’t miss it.”

–-----

“Enter!” Iriala called, putting down her pen as she glanced up at the dwarven water clock she had installed on her wall.

The underkeeper boy was late.

The door opened and he stepped inside, scowling in a distracted manner that reminded her oddly of Ed. The old goat was rubbing off on him.

“If you go on scowling at people like that, they’re going to think you’re carrying a grudge. You should be mindful of what your face is communicating to the world.”

Bernt blinked with surprise and schooled his features.

“Better,” Iriala nodded. “Now, what do you want?”

“Uh…” the young mage floundered for a moment, clearly trying to work out the right way to start. “Sorry, Archmage. I’m working on an Illurian naval pyromancer’s mana network architecture, on Ed’s recommendation.”

Iriala frowned slightly. She’d never liked that Ed let his subordinates address him so casually. It undermined his status, and that wasn’t really something he could afford in his position.

But it was his organization, and it wasn’t as though he was going to start listening now.

The underkeeper noticed her expression and swallowed nervously. She knew which architecture he was talking about – it might be rare in Besermark, but it was also famous. Not a bad choice for underground usage, at least compared to traditional Beseri pyromancy. It was a tricky augmentation to master when it was complete, and powerful enough to justify its use despite its high failure rate – at least to the Illurians. This could be more interesting than she’d expected.

“So, I’m currently trying to source the material for my second investiture – a perpetual flame. I was hoping you might be able to help me, since those aren’t exactly available on the open market.”

Iriala nodded. “We do have one in containment. You could, perhaps, propagate another one from it for your investiture.”

Bernt’s expression relaxed and he opened his mouth to talk, but she cut him off.

“Of course, I’d say that the guild has already done you quite a significant favor with regard to your demon familiar.” She said, staring at him over the top of her glasses. “And you’re not even a member. I don’t know that it’s appropriate for me to invest in you in this manner. Have you spoken with Archmage Thurdred about this?”

She emphasized Ed’s title a little. She couldn’t help it. Hierarchies mattered, gods damn it.

Bernt swallowed. “No. Should I have?”

Iriala shrugged. “He’s your direct superior – nobody has a stronger interest in seeing you grow. Granted, he doesn’t have what you need.”

This was pointless, why was she dragging this out? She had another meeting in ten minutes and way too much paperwork to deal with. The boy could learn to think strategically on his own time.

“If you’re part of the guild, then an investment in you is an investment in ourselves. You can use the flame if you become a member. You should have done that as soon as you could afford it in the first place. You’re an academy-trained professional, not a hedge mage or a foreigner – there’s nothing to disqualify you, as much as people might sneer at your choice of vocation. Besides, you’re never going to get anywhere without access to a proper library.”

He wouldn’t be the first young mage to chafe at the restrictions the guild placed on them. It wasn’t terribly unusual for someone to try to find a way to get around it. But those who did had to find some other way to access the resources they needed. Even most of those who turned to adventuring would buy a guild membership eventually, if only to access the library. Independence was only practical for so long.

She expected Bernt would try to argue with her, but he only nodded, watching her expectantly.

“Good. In addition, I want you to keep an eye on that solicitor girl that Radast sent to the Underkeepers. Just… let me know if she does anything unusual or interesting, or if you learn anything of note about the solicitors’ activities.”

“You don’t trust them?” he said, eyebrows rising slightly in faint surprise. “I thought we were all working together now…”

Iriala smiled humorlessly at him. “I trust them just fine, young man. The Solicitors are always good to the letter of their contracts and I expect that they are reliable allies. But this is a political relationship. We can’t expect them to take our interests into account any more than they absolutely have to. I’m not going to waste all my time looking into their affairs, but it would be foolish not to at least keep some eyes and ears open.”

Bernt swallowed, apparently a little uncomfortable with the idea of spying on his new co-worker. But, after a few moments, he nodded again.

“Okay. I’ll need a bit of time to come up with the funds for the membership…”

Iriala waved dismissively. “Take all the time you need. You know where to find us.”

If she could get Bernt to join the guild, it could simplify a few problems for her. It would give her more direct influence over him, for one. The young underkeeper and his imp could be quite useful if they were properly directed.

While Iriala was juggling a variety of other concerns and interests, she needed to help both the Underkeepers and the Solicitors build more popular support for themselves in the near or medium term. It was a necessary step in legitimizing them as real political players and building a power base for them, which they would in turn use to support Iriala’s own larger goals – chiefly, developing a broader base of support for the Mages’ Guild, which was overly reliant on the good will of the crown. That was mostly due to an obsolete, calcified balance of power between various guilds, the nobility and the most powerful temples, but the irritating result was that building up new political players was simpler and quicker than attempting to reconfigure old alliances.

Their close relationship to the political elite had historically made the Mages’ Guild one of the most powerful institutions in the realm, but it also robbed them of the ability to pursue their own political interests where they conflicted with those of the crown.

That was going to change.

–------

Bernt breathed a sigh of relief as he left the Archmage’s office.

That could have gone worse. He’d already known that he would need to become a guild member eventually, which made it a relatively small price to pay, ignoring for a moment the very significant amount of gold he would be spending on it. Her other demand didn’t sit as well with him.

It wasn’t as though he trusted the warlocks. No, it was more that he felt uncomfortable with the idea of spying on Josie. It just didn’t feel right. But, on the other hand, it wasn’t as though they were going to do anything to her personally. The guild was just watching its own back, and probably that of the Underkeepers as well.

This wasn’t going to get him his next investiture immediately, but it was achievable and he wouldn’t have to anger any other guilds or delve into any dungeons. All things considered, things were looking up.