Underkeeper

Two hours later, Bernt was sitting back at the Underkeepers’ headquarters in the main room, alongside his colleagues. Nearly everyone looked as beat up as he did, covered in sweat, grime, and minor injuries that weren’t worth wasting a healing potion on. Someone had brought in a few bottles of wine, and they passed one around as they swapped stories of the day’s happenings.

Fiora had spent the whole day defending the main breach with the support of an entire party of adventurers and fifteen guards. They’d managed, mostly by keeping the mass of incoming kobolds bottled up in the tunnel mouth, where they couldn’t take advantage of their superior numbers. Still, the kobolds had been creative, deploying a geomancy sorcerer to rapidly open a second tunnel right next to the first, and then breaking through into the defender’s flank to widen the original breach. That nearly brought down the city wall, but it also gave the kobolds more space to work with. Fiora’s team had lost a few people there, but they still managed to hold the line until the army arrived.

Bernt’s mind was slowly recovering from the excessive strain of casting so many spells, but a bone-deep pain had settled into his entire body to replace the mental fuzziness he’d felt before.

The alcohol helped with that. A little.

The conversation died at the sound of an odd scrabbling up above them. Everyone glanced up. There was Jori perched on top of a rafter in plain view of everyone present, wearing her Underkeeper’s robes and spinning in a circle as she tried to reach an itchy spot on her back, between her wings. Most of the Underkeepers knew about her now, except for Kustov, Yarrod and Uriah—though they’d probably heard the rumors about the Underkeeper warlock by now.

All three of them looked up at the imp uneasily, but took their cue from Ed, who simply nodded at her and gestured for her to come down. Then he looked meaningfully over at Bernt.

“Introduce your demon.”

Bernt flushed slightly, but sat up straight. At the same time, Jori jumped down, spreading her wings briefly to slow her descent before landing near the center of the room.

“Hi! My name is Jori,” she said, cutting off what Bernt had been about to say. She smiled at the group, revealing sharp, needle-like teeth that made her look quite a bit more threatening than usual. She held out her hand to a bemused Yarrod, who was just barely taller than her. The gnome leaned back before controlling himself.

“Ahem,” he coughed politely, then reached out and gingerly shook her hand. “Well. I never!” He looked over at Bernt. “Young man, what in the heavens’ name happened to you down in that dungeon?”

“I actually found her in the sewers a while back,” Bernt confessed, but he didn’t elaborate.

As Bernt talked, Jori moved on to Kustov, who didn’t shake her hand, but gave her a slight bow. She returned it, and held out her hand to Uriah.

He did not look amused.

“Ed. Why is that demon in here?”

Bernt didn’t know Uriah very well, since they’d never had an assignment together. He was a hydromancer who botched his augmentation somehow and never made it to the rank of magister. Working as an Underkeeper was most likely the best-earning job he could find after his accident, and his specialization probably made him the most qualified person in the room for the job. He was certainly a skilled hydromancer, even if he wasn’t especially powerful.

“It’s fine,” Ed said. “We have an understanding.”

The archmage sat down, and put his unlit pipe in his mouth. The tobacco lit as if by itself as he puffed on it—one of the benefits of his unorthodox focus, Bernt supposed.

“Why’s it wearing our robes?” Uriah probed further, his face drawn into a sneer. He clearly wasn’t a fan of this situation.

Well, Bernt supposed, there’s no time like the present. He cleared his throat, drawing Uriah’s attention.

“Jori was taking out rats and other minor nuisances in the sewers when I found her. She’s practically already a city maintenance worker. We should bring her on! She saved quite a few adventurers down in the dungeon, too!”

Kustov snorted. “You want us to start summoning demons to work for the Underkeepers? Or maybe just city maintenance? Are you mad?”

“No, no. I was thinking more like a hire. I think she’s a natural fit for our organization, really. Both for our original mandate and the new one.” Bernt hesitated. “Uh… are we still responsible for defending the city with the army here?”

Ed nodded. “Technically yes. But no, I’m not about to start putting demons on the payroll. Not that we have the money for it anyhow. The new mandate gave us looting rights in the dungeon, but General Arice and the count made it clear those wouldn’t apply to any kobolds that died outside of it. I’m working on the budgeting issue, but at the moment, we don’t even know if we’ll still have that mandate tomorrow. The army is here now, after all, and the enemy damn well broke into the city on our watch. We lost people—too many. Civilians got killed!”

The last came out a little too loud, his voice brimming with restrained anger. He wasn’t upset at them so much as himself, Bernt knew, though it surprised him a little to see it. Despite the fact that they’d been spread far too thin and faced a massive assault from many different fronts, Ed still seemed to feel that he failed somehow—that he should have been able to keep them out of the city entirely. That or maybe he just wished he’d disobeyed orders and closed all of those extra breaches.

Uriah cleared his throat obnoxiously.

“Ahem! Bringing the point back to the demon in the room… why, exactly, aren’t we killing it? Especially if, as Bernt over there said, he found it in the sewer—it’s our responsibility! More importantly, we can’t do our jobs if people think that we’re going to abduct and murder their children so we can trade their souls in for power in some horrific infernal ritual.”

Bernt squirmed as the argument hit home. What was he supposed to say to that? This was the exact reason why he’d kept Jori hidden in the first place. The little imp had backed away from the mage and now sat on top of an empty chest near Ed.

Ed rolled his eyes at the other mage. “You know that’s not how warlocks even work. Not the ones that survive long enough to actually be seen in the streets, anyway.”

“That’s irrelevant!” snapped Uriah. “It’s a breach of public trust!”

“That’s enough!” Ed said firmly, eyes going hard at the other man’s tone. “Jori made herself pretty godsdamned useful today—she probably saved many lives. I’m not going to see her killed for no reason, and you’re not going to push me. I don’t have the patience to worry about superstitious idiots when there’s a war on.”

Bernt stared at the archmage in surprise. He’d expected him to brush Uriah off, sure. If he cared about the opinion of the public enough to kill Jori, he would have done it last week. But that sounded almost like an endorsement of Jori.

What had she been up to during the battle? If Jori had managed to impress Ed somehow… that might change things a little. And the fact that the Solicitors were trying to get something out of Ed—or maybe Iriala—with that contract.

An idea started to take shape in his head and, plucking up his courage, he reached into his pouch and withdrew a stack of papers. It was a chance. Maybe it was nothing, but maybe there was something there. He had to try it.

“Uh… Ed? I think the Solicitors…” He stood up to hand the papers to Ed, trying to find the right words. “I think they’re actually hoping that we bring Jori in as an Underkeeper. Or that we keep her, at least. They… suggested that you could sponsor her permanently as her guarantor. You or Iriala, I mean.”

At least, that was what the paperwork suggested. Verbally, Radast had pushed Bernt toward a pact—quite forcefully, in fact. Bernt had no idea what to make of that, but he wasn’t going to spend his life untangling the machinations of people who wrote contracts for a living.

“A… guarantor.” Ed’s habitual scowl deepened thoughtfully as he accepted the papers and began scanning through them. Dayle passed the wine to Kustov and the two started a quiet conversation in the background, apparently not as invested in the discussion as Uriah, who was still watching Ed with a sour frown.

The archmage read silently for a moment, then muttered “What kind of game are they playing?” and flipped to a new page. Bernt could tell when he got to the clause about announcing the contract publicly. Ed stopped and looked up, sighing.

“Yorith’s balls, Bernt. How is it that every time another organization wants to play politics with us, you’re right there in the middle of it?”

Bernt shrugged awkwardly. “I… What does it mean? Is this sort of thing rare?”

“Rare?” Ed laughed humorlessly. “This is the first time I’ve ever heard of anything like this. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s never been done before. I’d bet it’s a relic from the original agreement that legalized demon summoning in the realm and officially established the Solicitors in the first place.”

“What will you do?” Bernt asked. He felt nervous sweat drip down his side, but tried not to show it. He was too tired to have this conversation right now. Worse, everyone was listening—he never could think in front of an audience like this. If Ed rejected the idea out of hand, he didn’t know what he was going to say or do.

Ed folded the papers and stuck them in his pocket. He looked over to Jori first, meeting her red eyes, which looked up at him with feigned nonchalance. Bernt felt her trepidation, and he was sure Ed could see it on her just as easily.

“Jori, you’ve earned a little goodwill today. Whatever we do about this weird proposal here, I’m not going to blow your head off on some Solicitor’s say-so and they can’t make me. That is, as long as you behave yourself and I don’t have any reason to believe you’re going to threaten anyone in my city. Do we understand each other?”

Jori nodded with a bright smile. She was feeling relieved, though Bernt wasn’t sure that was entirely warranted, all things considered.

Ed turned back to Bernt. “I’m going to do what I did the last time someone tried to play games with us—I’m going to go talk to Iriala. And speaking of games, I have another job for you to do, but this one is strictly voluntary. It’s… not entirely without risks—it’ll probably result in some long-term hard feelings toward you from the Alchemists’ Guild. I was going to handle it myself, but I’ve been summoned to a meeting with the magistrate and the count at the same time tomorrow. I could have Dayle or Fiora do it, but I think it would send a stronger message if you represented us for it.”

Bernt perked up. What did he have to lose? He very much doubted any of the city’s alchemists would be civil toward him ever again. And they were the ones who’d poisoned him!

“What’s the job?”