#Those who create‚ those who give existence through their craft‚ *also* feel more pointedly than the rest that their crafts gives them being

[fragmentedblade]

The fact his son's way of making Mr. Xiao pay attention to us is having us work for him so that we'd get on his nerves... hilarious, and so real

[tapirsallthewaydown]

This is the second part of Pirelo’s chapter, the first part of which I posted last week.  Since I’d already written PoV chapters with one girl and two guys, I wanted the fourth chapter to feature another female PoV character.  I also wanted to put an older female character in this story.  However, the stats I generated for her were 12,12,11,15,13,6.  After I worked out what an older woman with those stats might be like, I decided that she was a little too badass for me to do her justice in the amount of time I had.  So I’m just going to introduce her from a less experienced character’s point view here and save her PoV for later.

In the meantime, click below if you love Pirelo and/or nitpicky worldbuilding details.

At the top of the steps, Pirelo pointedly gave the new porter a silver demilunar, “in lieu of the expected beating.”  Then he went to his office and tried once again to figure out how to avoid sounding barking mad in The Meeting.

 Most of the work Pirelo did for Seruvia amounted to keeping supply lines running.  He read requests originating among the many branches and twigs of Seruvian government or from its semi-dependent client governments for rare, often magical, goods and directed them to people who specialized in supplying the relevant goods. He also collected, copied, and filed notes acknowledging the receipt of those goods.  Thus, he had documents showing that a dealer in Tellurem had shipped five static-boxes to Seruvia, where the Port Authority had noted the arrival of five static-boxes.  Subsequently, the department that had placed the original order received three static-boxes. The wizard in charge there hadn’t taken it amiss because static-boxes were so difficult to craft that he’d assumed the dealer didn’t have five of them in stock at any given time and that the other two would get to him eventually.  But the Port Authority had definitely recorded five in the shipment.

 Pirelo had reported the discrepancy to his then-supervisor, whose chief concern had been determining whether or not Seruvia had already paid for the static-boxes. But the question of where those static-boxes had gone lodged itself in the back of Pirelo’s mind for months.  Then another piece of information caught his attention.

 Seruvia’s client city Dralco boasted an old and revered college of wizardry, for which the Dralconite government had requested the loan of a single static-box.  The paper trail showed that two static-boxes used during the war had been cleaned up and marked for transport to the college, which had sent back a receipt and a letter of thanks for the one static-box that had been requested.  There could have been an honest clerical error.  That was the simplest explanation for this second discrepancy.  But what if it was not really the second discrepancy, but the third?

 Pirelo had told Tamario about the first discrepancy, reasoning that Tamario would know enough about static-boxes and their uses to give him some context for judging how serious the matter was.  Tamario had mulled it over and said, “Well, if it was theft on the overland route, they’d need more than one inside man.  Static-boxes are heavy.  Can’t just pull one off the top and run.  Could get an honest carter drunk, but he’d notice the weight difference when he got going again.”

 “And only a wizard, or someone working for a wizard, would go the trouble,” Pirelo had ventured.

 “Nah, you’d be surprised.”  As it turned out, Tamario had plenty of awful or darkly funny tales about undereducated soldiers, overconfident officers, or some blighted wretches from the navy misappropriating or misusing static-boxes or, much more often, cold-boxes.  Most of them involved taking heat-sensitive potions out to make room for recreational beverages.  The really horrible ones were about what happened when a static-box was needed but an officer with a little knowledge decided that a cold-box would do. Because static-boxes were rarer and heavier than cold-boxes, the reverse situation rarely happened.  But Tamario had heard of a captain in the navy who liked the idea of putting suspected spies in a cold-box prior to interrogation and decided that putting a man in a static-box should have similar results. As far as the captain was concerned, cold-boxes and static-boxes had basically the same effect on potions and foodstuffs, except that a static-box was efficacious over longer time periods. So, he’d reasoned, the same should hold true for their effect on spies.  But when the captain opened the static-box to resume interrogation, the suspect was dead.

 Pirelo had expressed doubts about the reliability of Tamario’s sources for that last story. He’d slept poorly the following night, unable to shake off the feeling that his tiny room was somehow shrinking to the size of a navy cold-box while his eyes were closed.  

 Three months after that conversation, as he copied and filed the receipt for a single static-box delivered to the college in Dralco, cautionary tales about substituting cold-boxes for static-boxes (or vice versa) leapt out of the filing cabinets of Pirelo’s memory, along with the strained voice of a frantic young corporal who’d come to him about the disappearance of half a dozen cold-boxes.  During the three days since he’d copied that receipt, Pirelo had been trying to think of a way to explain all this to his new supervisor so that she would see the pieces together as he saw them.

 To that end, Pirelo had collected all the information he could about the woman known to Seruvia as Erzetta Rialca, which was as close as most Gianorans were prepared to get to pronouncing Yrset Ryuwaelka.  Until the end of Seruvia’s most recent war, she had been a lieutenant and advisor to the captain of the Crimson Falcons mercenary company and kept the company’s finances in order.  All of Seruvia was familiar with some version of her deeds at Brindela Pass.  After the war, the Falcons as a company had been awarded Seruvian citizenship, formally disbanded, and folded into Seruvia’s peacetime governmental apparatus. Many former mercenaries were placed within the city-states standing security forces, although the governing body had placed others, especially the women, in decidedly civilian departments. Pirelo’s colleague Ariella was more familiar with the details of this last bit than most, as she’d been deeply involved in processing the paperwork for the mass induction and demilitarization of hundreds of people who had won citizenship through war.

 According to Ariella, Yrset Ryuwaelka was originally from Halania, now officially renamed West Griisland.  Given that she’d been among the last Haeylantic partisans to leave the region, Pirelo planned to stick with Halania or, better yet, Haeylan if the topic ever came up.  After Halania was lost, she’d moved south with the Falcons and married a mercenary whom one of “the old-timers”—that is, the Falcons-turned-citizens who were older than thirty—eulogized as “a gallant, silver-tongued fool.”  The consensus among young ex-mercenaries Pirelo had met was that she was a terrifying dragon of a woman

 So that was the person who had taken charge of Pirelo’s department during the demilitarization.  That was who he had to convince.  And yet, hadn’t his own brother accused him more than once of making up troubles that didn’t exist for attention or to make his rather limited life seem exciting?  He didn’t think he was striking at shadows this time.  But what if he was?  Or, worse, what if he wasn’t—but no one believed him?

 He was still fretting when Ariella tapped on his office door.  “Good morning, Pire.  I hope this isn’t an interruption.”

 “Ah, no, no interruption.  Good morning, Ariella.  I was just finished sort of mentally rehearsing for this afternoon.”

 “Right.  About that . . . your meeting got moved up.”

 “What?  No!  How long do I have?”

 Ariella glanced back over her shoulder, then smiled apologetically.  “I’m afraid she wants to talk to you first thing.”

 The implications of that barely had time to sink in before a stocky middle-aged woman in trousers was in the cramped office, pulling up the extra chair to sit facing Pirelo across his desk.  He began to rise to greet her, but she gestured for him to remain in his seat.  Ariella formally introduced him to Mistress Rialca.

 “I didn’t mean to take you by surprise.  My afternoon schedule got knocked completely off its wheels by a bunch of titled lordlings—no offense meant,” she added for the benefit of Ariella, who was a distant cousin of a viscount.

 “None taken,” Ariella replied quickly.  

 “Thank you for taking time to hear my concerns,” said Pirelo.  “In Seruvia, it’s customary to meet in the higher-ranking person’s office.  Shall we move to yours?”

 “Ariella already filled me in on the usual protocols.  She also mentioned that you’d need help with the stairs, so it seemed more efficient to come to you.  Should she close the door?  Is this matter confidential?”

 “Well, I’m not sure.” Pirelo looked past Mistress Rialca’s shoulder, to Ariella, who was waving her fingers as if to say, Go on, you can do this.  Pirelo realized that he could find the right words for this.  He didn’t know Mistress Rialca personally, and what he knew of her could, when viewed from one angle, create an intimidating impression.  But he knew veterans and widows.  “I’ve noticed some discrepancies in inventory forms. There might have been malfeasance—I can’t say for certain.  It’s your call whether to investigate further.”

 Mistress Rialca leaned toward the desk.  “Ariella, please close the door and make sure no one loiters in the hall.  Pirelo, do you have the forms with you now?”

 “Yes, madam.” Pirelo spread the documents on his desk. “As you can see here and here—” he pointed out the appropriate lines—“five static-boxes left Port Authority custody, and two of them remain unaccounted for.  Later, two static-boxes were prepared for shipment to Dralco, but one of them disappeared en route and is still unaccounted for.”

 Mistress Rialca frowned at the dates on the papers.  “A static-box costs as much as a warhorse, and weighs about half as much, and we’ve lost three of them on two separate occasions within the last four months. Unbelievable!”

“It really is unbelievable that this would be simple coincidence.  I reported the first discrepancy to your predecessor, and he considered the matter resolved after some financial discussion—but the two static-boxes that disappeared from the record after leaving the Port Authority were never found.”

 “What about the one that vanished on the way to Dralco?”

 “It’s possible that the wrong number was written down by mistake, and there never was a second one sent.  However, I know a wizard who told me some things that made me think the disappearance of some cold-boxes from military storage might be related.”  Pirelo pointed out the notes he had taken from the panicking corporal, whose problem had not been, officially Pirelo’s problem but who had seemed to calm down from seeing his problem entered into the record. “And as my father often says, three times is enemy action.”