Underkeeper

When Bernt left for work that morning, Jori didn’t follow. Instead, she took a left turn after entering the sewer system and darted toward the Crafters’ District.

She knew he wouldn’t actually start working for at least an hour or so—he still had to go to the office and collect his assignments for the day. If she didn’t miss her guess, he would also spend some time talking to the elder Great Mage, Ed, about what he’d learned the day before and about the blood fiend. Bernt was very excited that hellfire could burn spirits, or transform them, or something. To Jori, it didn’t seem that strange, or that important.

All kinds of fire burned things to make ashes and smoke. How was this any different?

But it didn’t matter, not really. For her, all this just meant she had time to check in on the bad alchemist woman. Most humans, as far as Jori had seen, didn’t take their enemies seriously enough. It was dangerous to simply ignore someone who had already taken a swipe at you. While Jori had agreed not to start any trouble in the city, she wasn’t about to overlook a threat like that.

Within a few minutes, she was standing near the storm drain by the alchemist’s shop again, peering out at the door across the street.

She could still smell the sulfurous odor left behind by the demon’s body when it disintegrated. It would reform in the third hell pretty soon.

For a few minutes, nothing happened. Pedestrians passed by, and the sun rose over the roofs of the city, bathing the street in the harsh light of day. Jori sat still, eyes locked on the street, but mentally, she checked in on Bernt. The range of the familiar bond was limited, but it wasn’t absolute. If she could take the time to concentrate, she could receive scattered images and sound from her human, even at a significant distance. If she was distracted, it would only work that well when she was much closer.

Bernt was telling the Great Mage about the demon that had attacked them the night before. The elder mage seemed unsurprised by the presence of other demons, but he did seem to take it seriously. As she watched, he wrote something on a piece of paper and gave it to Bernt, mentioning reporting it to the Solicitors. She couldn’t hear the words, really. It was more like she got an impression of what Bernt understood.

A guard’s uniform out in the street pulled Jori back to herself. A fat man was entering the shop. He didn’t quite look like the normal guards, though—the uniform was spotless and he wasn’t wearing any armor or weapons with it.

Thinking quickly, Jori darted off, moving to the exact spot where she’d found the poison metal the bad woman had put in her drain. Putting her ear up to the wall, she listened.

“…expect me to produce two hundred mind fortress potions per day for your stupid guards! Why would you even need so many? Mind fortress potions aren’t used by the military—we don’t stockpile them!” came the alchemist’s voice.

“I have a responsibility to my guards!” a male voice responded. “Besides, it’s out of my hands. Archmage Thurdred is managing the subterranean defense of the city, and these are for the guards that have been loaned out to him for that purpose. It’s his right to determine what equipment and consumables are required for the operation, and it’s my responsibility to outfit my guards. Fill the order!”

“You can’t do this! We’d have to buy up the entire city’s supply of castrum root, and even that would barely last us a week,” she spat.

The man’s voice rose, and Jori heard a rustle, like someone shaking a piece of paper in the air.

“This is an official government order! Standard emergency fees as dictated in the Alchemists’ Guild charter have already been paid into your account and you are required to meet our emergency needs. If you don’t honor our contract, your guild will lose its exclusivity rights in Halfbridge and the count will be forced to seek alternate sources!”

There was a thump, like a hand slapping down on a table, followed by steps as the man left the shop.

“Aiyvan,” the woman called, voice hoarse. “Get to every supplier in the city and buy every single scrap of castrum root you can get your hands on. Then get to the Mages’ Guild and pay the scryers there to put you in contact with the branches in Loamfurth and Yetin’s Harbor. Tell them to send us everything they’ve got. Tell them we’ll pay double if they can get a shipment back to me before the end of the week. That asshole is trying to sink our entire guild presence in Halfbridge! I’m not going to give him the satisfaction.”

Jori huffed out a little laugh to herself. She didn’t understand exactly what all this meant, but it wasn’t hard to tell that the elder Great Mage Ed had found a way to strike back at the bad alchemist woman.

She hoped he’d be doing more than this, though. When you have an enemy on the defensive, you go for the throat!

***

“Like I told you before. If you still think getting creative is a good idea when you’re working on your second augmentation, I won’t argue with you. But at least with this first augmentation, and most especially with your very first investiture, you should follow a proven architecture. It’s far too dangerous to experiment when you don’t even know the first thing about what an investment actually feels like and have no practical experience performing one.”

“Yes, I know,” Bernt answered, trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice. “I just wanted to run it by you to see if you’d ever heard of anything like that. Has anyone tried to use the principles behind hellfire to modify their own soul before?”

“I doubt it. To me, it mostly just looks like a more elaborate way to kill yourself. Just pick an architecture and stick to it! And if you ever think about actually messing with that stuff in the future, at least talk to someone from the Mages’ Academy first, preferably a wizard.”

Bernt nodded, holding out his hand in a calming gesture. “Don’t worry, I won’t. Besides, I already picked one. I want to go with the liquid fire—from Illuria.”

Ed sat back in his chair, looking mollified somewhat and taking a drag from his pipe. “Good! That’s good. Illurian mage-mariners are a holy terror on the seas.”

“Um… There’s a bit of a problem, though,” Bernt went on. “I haven’t been able to get a droplet of burning rain for the first investiture. The Alchemists’ Guild apparently bought up all of it to make war materiel for the incoming army.”

Ed snorted. “Sure, I bet the army is going to just casually set the entire tunnel system on fire. That’ll work out wonderfully, no tactical concerns there.”

Nodding to himself, he leaned forward and handed Bernt a list.

“Here are your stops for the day. Don’t worry, there aren’t any alchemists on it, but don’t touch any unknown substances regardless, alright? I would have thought we covered that in your initial training… And don’t worry about that burning droplet right now. It’s not that rare of a material. I’ll look into it and let you know how you can get some. Just focus on studying your damned safety procedures.”

Bernt felt himself start to bristle at that, but after a moment, he nodded. Ed hadn’t offered to give him anything, and it was stupid to turn down help at this point.

“Thanks. One more question, though,” he said, pointing at the large sacks piled up on the ground behind Ed. “What’s with all these sacks? Are those roots in there? Should I get rid of them?”

For possibly the first time, Bernt saw Ed’s face melt into a cheerful smile. It was… unsettling.

“No, no. Those are for leverage. You don’t need to worry about that, just move along and get to work.”

Bernt made his way out of the building feeling glad to have told someone about what he’d learned. The old man’s input was, if he was being honest, invaluable. It helped clarify his path forward, though he still had no idea how to get what he needed to perform his first investment.

But… he trusted Ed. It would be fine. Bernt had other problems to worry about—the fact that someone was summoning demons in Halfbridge, for one. Initially, he’d wanted to avoid the Solicitors as long as possible, but he couldn’t wait anymore. Sure, the blood fiend hadn’t seemed very dangerous, but if demons started attacking people in the streets, he knew exactly where Iriala, Ed, and the Solicitors would come looking. He needed to be the one to report this.

He could feel the scrap of paper Ed had given him in his pocket, an address scrawled on it in Ed’s sloppy handwriting. He would have to go see them tonight, or risk further attacks by that amateur summoner and their weakling demons, and he had no idea what was going to happen when he did.

Focusing on his bond as he stepped out into the street, he was surprised to note Jori wasn’t here yet, but she was coming his way quickly.

He hoped making some effort to help expose the rogue warlock would buy him and Jori at least some goodwill. He could only hope they were more reasonable than Ed had made them sound.

Sighing, Bernt looked down at the list. He was going down to the lower residential district to help a handful of regular city maintenance workers replace rusted grates and to hold up masonry while they pulled out and replaced a few stone blocks that had cracked over the winter.

A chance to practice his geomancy, he supposed.

***

Iriala looked up at the sound of knocking on her doorframe to find the secretary from the front desk of the Scryers’ Office standing in the open door.

“Yes?” she asked. Glancing into her glasses, she could already see what the message was, but it was more polite to actually take the message than to send the poor man away.

“Ahem. Good morning, archmage,” the man said stiffly, holding up two pieces of paper. “You asked to be informed of any messages that the Alchemists’ Guild tried to send through us. Master Alchemist Theresa’s apprentice was just here. We have two, one each to Loamfurth and Yetin’s Harbor.”

“Wonderful.” Iriala snatched up the two proffered pages to scan their contents. With a little grin, she leaned back and thought for a moment.

“Go ahead and delay sending them for a while—maybe till this evening or however long you think you can get away with,” she said, pulling out a scrap of paper and scribbling a few lines on it. “In the meantime, get this note delivered to Archmage Thurdred of the Underkeepers. I expect that he’ll be at the command post at the main breach. Otherwise, just drop it off with either him, Fiora, or Dayle at the Underkeepers’ headquarters.”

As the secretary left, she allowed herself a bigger smile and pulled out a sheaf of much higher-quality paper along with her best pen.

She needed to draft a letter to the Halfbridge Alchemists’ Guild.