Underkeeper

Jori jumped from the rooftop in the fading light and flared out her wings, catching on a balcony railing as she descended. She didn’t make a sound as she landed—which was good. She couldn’t afford to be seen stalking people in the night. They might think she was up to something.

In the street below, the evil, bad-smelling alchemist woman walked, chatting amiably with her apprentice. She’d bought him something to eat after they left the alchemist’s shop, and the younger man was cheerfully chomping some kind of incredible-smelling meat pastry. While he ate, the woman explained to him the best technique for preserving and processing kobold blood.

Jori did her best to ignore that. It was making her hungry and, more importantly, it was distracting her from her task.

This woman had tricked them. She had summoned the Underkeepers on a false errand and then poisoned Bernt with the shiny yellow rocks. Jori had felt Bernt’s terror and pain. She knew now that he would be fine—she’d watched him retrieve a potion that was supposed to restore him. But he was still recovering, and he was in pain.

It was a betrayal, and that was something Jori understood very well. It was a way of life in the place before.

When someone stabbed you in the back, you didn’t just let things go back to the way they were before. No, that wouldn’t do at all. To leave a challenge like that unanswered was to submit. Bernt hadn’t understood it as a challenge at all, but Jori knew better. She had spent her life submitting to greater powers, but this mortal was not such a one. Jori bared her teeth in a silent snarl, eyes following the bad woman’s every movement.

She could kill her right here, right now. She could escape easily into the sewers—no one would catch her. Not right away. But she had agreed to behave herself, and the Great Mage and the Great Warlocks would both come for her immediately if she broke her word. There were no other demons in the city—and certainly no other ones who might have a reason to light an alchemist up in hellfire. She could feel the spell bound to her skin, tethered to the mind of the Great Mage in the distance. There was no hiding from her.

So, she watched instead. If the alchemist woman tried something again, Jori would see.

Or, if an opportunity presented itself, maybe she could do something… less direct. A proportional response, one that wouldn’t be recognized as a response at all.

***

Gnugg woke from a deep sleep, jostled awake by a sense of momentum. It took a moment before the pain of an impact he hadn’t felt registered on his ribs. Ouch. All around him, whelps were roused in a similar manner as Auntie Dudru made her way through the Warren’s sleeping chamber, like she did every morning.

“Up, up! Come along children, we have lots to do today!”

Gnugg stepped close to the wall on the periphery of the group to avoid notice, as he usually did. It was safer there.

They were ushered along out of the room and into a central chamber connected to two other dormitories and a tunnel. The last whelp from Uncle Tugs’s weyr made his way past the central pedestal, where he reverently touched the dragon scale propped up there. Then he kneeled down next to the others, quietly facing the center. Gnugg’s weyr followed suit as they filed past the pedestal, touched the dragon scale, and kneeled in a row on their side for the morning meditations.

The adults gathered together at one end, bowed toward the scale, and spoke together. “All hail Conperion, Lord of the Deep, Terror of the Dark Halls. Glory to the Great One.” All of the whelps repeated the words back in unison.

It was soothing to Gnugg. Really, it was the only time he felt like part of the group. Silence fell and he closed his eyes, focusing desperately to find the dragon within, like he always did—like all of them were doing.

If only he could awaken his blood. Sorcerers didn’t need to be big to be valued. Some sorcerers even grew wings! Oh, what a dream it would be to fly! He would go to the surface where there was no ceiling and just go up forever, far away from here. He would find a new tribe—a new family.

Gnugg scolded himself and reoriented his thoughts. This wasn’t the way to achieve the dream.

He imagined a smoldering fire inside of his veins in place of blood, and fed his thoughts and feelings into them one by one as they arose. To find the power and fury of his dragon blood, a kobold must successfully silence the noise within. So they said, but he had never managed to stop the thoughts from coming.

As usual, he had achieved nothing when they were roused from the Finding the Dragon meditation. Gnugg returned to the periphery of the group as Auntie Dudru led them to their task for the day. Nobody had spoken to him yet, and he wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible.

He recognized the tunnels and trap patterns here, but couldn’t quite place the location until they passed a door with a familiar set of chips and scuff marks. A sense of nostalgia filled him. This was the nursery! Every kobold spent the first few months of their lives here, though the chambers were oddly empty now. They should be full of whelps. He didn’t need to wait long for an answer to his unspoken question, though. As they entered an unusually warm chamber at the end of the tunnel, he saw a line of empty carts, and a nearly endless field of eggs. There had to be over a thousand of them!

“Today, you are going to load the eggs from the hatchery into these carts,” Auntie Dudru instructed. “There will be others coming by to move these once they are full and bring you more empty carts.”

Gnugg felt puzzled. Why would they move the eggs? Was this busywork? He stepped forward to begin, but was stopped short by Auntie Dudru’s hand on his head.

“Not you, Gnugg—we need to have a talk. Follow me.” She led him just down the hall to one of the empty nursery chambers. Once there, though, she just stood there looking at him quietly, unnervingly. He was afraid to speak. A cold tingling feeling in his gut built until it threatened to make him throw up, but before it got so far, Uncle Tugs and Auntie Nihsa came in, and the waiting was over.

“We heard a disturbing story from the other hatchlings, Gnugg,” Auntie Dudru began, eyes boring into him. “They said that they were attacked by a demon in the halls. Do you remember something like that?”

Gnugg clutched his shaking hands together and looked at the floor.

“Yes,” he said quietly.

The adults looked at him, clearly expecting more. After a few seconds of silence, Nihsa chimed in. “They said that it attacked them, but not you. That they tried to drive it away together, but you didn’t. Is that right?”

Gnugg swallowed. He didn’t like where this was going at all.

“Yes?” he said again, though it came out hesitantly, like a question this time.

The adults stared again, then looked at each other, and back at him with… disappointment? Uncle Tugs went down on one knee and grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Why didn’t the demon attack you, Gnugg? Did it offer you something? Did you agree to anything? Did it ask you for any of your blood, or give you any of its own?”

Gnugg tried to step back, startled at that accusation, but the hand held too firmly. “No! It didn’t say anything. I didn’t do anything, I swear!” The pressure was too much, and Gnugg felt tears pooling in his eyes again, and a tremor went through his body that Tugs must have felt in his hand.

“Perhaps,” Uncle Tugs allowed, sighing deeply. “But that’s also part of the problem, Gnugg. You didn’t support your weyr! You’re supposed to be part of this community! You have to fight alongside the others, work alongside them, and die alongside them if need be. For the glory of Conperion!”

“Glory to the Great One,” Gnugg intoned automatically along with the other two.

“You don’t pull your weight when working with the weyr, and you don’t even show the courage or loyalty to fight alongside them when they are attacked. That’s not acceptable,” Auntie Dudru chastised. “I’m going to put you on penal labor at the surface front. Maybe after you spend some time working alone, you’ll learn not to freeload on the efforts of your peers.”

_____

Gnugg trudged through the dark tunnels toward the surface. He felt devastated by the way he was being treated, but he was excited as well. He had practically been thrown away by the community, but also, ironically, he had never felt so in control of his life.

It was a silly feeling, he knew. He was just going up to present himself to Tunnel Guard Commander Sark, who would put him to work. Most likely, they would force him to do the same thing he’d been doing during the incursion—carting bodies he could barely budge in the first place. It was supposed to help him grow big and strong, but he suspected that was a lie. They just liked to watch him fail. But he got to choose his own route to the guard commander, and nobody was watching him.

It was more than he’d ever done alone before—that made it a victory of sorts.

He supposed it was a fair punishment, in one way. It was true that he had not tried to defend the weyr from the demon. Why should he have? The demon had come to defend him from the weyr. It was the only one who had ever stood up for him, and he wasn’t going to betray such a kindness with violence. That would be undragonly!

He was proud of himself for not revealing those details to the adults. Maybe he would see the demon again one day. If it asked him to make a deal with him, he could try to make an agreement with it for real! That would show Auntie Dudru. It would show all of them, and it would serve them right!