#which resulted in me getting to look at the ledger books I’d called for a grand total of 30 minutes

[waugh-bao]

London (+ Sofia): Week 3

[booksforevermore13]

Sherry Lips and Crystal Stars (Part I)

Summary: 'So, when they break away, and he looks at her, green to brown, she knows that he's the one. That in the end, he had always been the one.'

Ginny Weasley works on a strict owe-to-owe basis, but it's one person she can never fully repay. And she's always running from him. Always. Until Kaz Brekker needs her to recruit him for a highly coveted kidnapping.

A/N: This becomes one of the first MCs I have ever written, and this was, at first, meant to be a one-shot (note the word meant), but I evidently let myself get carried away.

Therefore, this extremely obscure Shadow and Bone (the show) AU is the result of the Harry and Ginny Discord's Birthday Challenge 2021! It's basically set in the Crows' part of the show (to all those who know what I'm talking about), but to all those who have no knowledge of it, you don't need to. In fact, you absolutely don't need to familiar with the show or the books, to understand it, and I would be honoured if you decide to give this a read, and, in the end, or whenever you want, leave a review :D.

Above all, I hope you enjoy, because I loved, loved writing this!

Read it on Fanfiction or AO3 if you prefer!

PART I

i.

"I know what a million kruge means to me. What does it mean to you?" he asks, but she knows it's directed at her. He knows that she's the one most hesitant. That she's the one who needs it more than anyone here. Maybe even him.

"Freedom," she answers and she doesn't hesitate. She can't let him see her doing so. But she doesn't lie.

Weirdly, when he looks away, she can't tear her eyes away from him but after, when he finally glances at her, the briefest of briefest glances, she looks away first.

She doesn't know why.

"Fun," Jesper chuckles. "Like, at least a few months."

Why and how, they govern her life. Most of the time, she couldn't begin to explain why. That's what differs her from everyone here. The weight of anonymity lies heavy on her, not them.

So when it's Arken's turn and he doesn't miss a beat, she doesn't question why. "Retirement," he states simply, and her eyes can't help but stray to the scars peeking out from under his sleeve.

They're trivial needs, for her (for them?) and for a second, she wishes she had them too.

"Right, so we press on."

Her eyes are set on not looking at him, but when he walks past her, the opposite side of where they should have been heading, that's when she looks up.

"Where are you going?"

He doesn't answer her.

"Jesper, go with Arken," and he limps over to where the two of them are standing, handing Jesper a stash of kruge.

"Inej, come."

His boots strike the gravel, but they don't make a sound. Inej follows.

"Where are we going?"

"I don't trust him," he says, when they've turned a corner. "Arken."

"And you're still letting him take us across the Fold?" She's never understood him. One minute, she feels she's known him forever, the next, he's the boy she knew as the Bastard of the Barrel. She's always trusted him while he was both.

"He's a means to the end."

"To the end?"

When she looks around, she doesn't know where they are, where he's taking her, and even though she knows he'll never take her anywhere dangerous, at least, not without telling her, her hands are by her knives, ready for the slightest sign of trouble.

"A way out."

Kaz turns around, and as Inej follows, she sees a girl by the shadows - but the girl isn't hiding. If she'd seen her in a crowd, she'd have remembered her.

But she hadn't.

ii.

"Brekker."

"Ginevra." Ginny holds back a smile. It's been a year, but she's glad he still knows what to call her.

For a second, she does consider smiling, something she had always felt free to do around him, before he'd become Dirtyhands, before he'd become the leader of the Dregs, and after; but she doesn't. For once, Kaz is not by himself.

This time, he's with a girl. The Wraith, as he'd told her when they'd met last. And Wraith she might be, but Ginny didn't know her.

"Something tells me you need me for something."

She lets her weight fall against the wall, but she doesn't look at Kaz. Instead, she looks at the girl, who stands unflinchingly beside him, unnatural, because something about the way she was standing tells her that this girl trusts Kaz the same way she does. Maybe even more.

Ginny isn't surprised though, seeing the three daggers lodged against her waist, and one peeking out from under her sleeve, two more under her belt, but it's her hand on her knife that catches her eye. It's sickening to see, but she's glad there's someone else other than her and him who's as paranoid as them.

So she smirks, and takes her weight off the wall. "Tell your friend to ease up," she announces loudly and there's a twinge of sick satisfaction as she sees the girl's face mold into slight surprise. She hides it well.

Ginny's heard of the Wraith, never seen her before.

Kaz nods, glancing at the girl, and Ginny's eyes flicker as something unheard passes between them.

She's never seen Kaz do that before.

But when he looks at her again, she forces her face back into a line, and into a smirk.

"What? What is it you want?"

"A favour."

She scoffs, stepping forward slightly. "I don't do favours," she says, "nor do you."

"Consider this an investment."

He needs her, she realises. Needs her bad. Needs her fast.

Part of her wants to say no, all of her wants to say no. But she owes him, even though he doesn't know that. She hasn't bothered to tell him all these years, and she is no mind to do so now, but it's that part of her that worries her, the part that makes sure she doesn't have any red on her ledger, that she doesn't owe anyone anything.

The other part of her knows she'll probably regret this, but this was a chance, she figured. Kaz worked on 'owe-and-give', so did she, and this was a chance to wipe her name off his chart.

So it's that part of her which makes her say yes.

And when she does, it takes everything in her to not snap Brekker's neck for that glint in his eye. He'd known she wouldn't refuse. Known her too well. He smirks, then turns to the girl, says something she misses.

The girl hesitates but nods, and part of her wonders how she had trusted him so readily. So easily. It had taken her years to place that sort of confidence in him, years for him to reciprocate.

There were few who trusted Kaz Brekker; she'd learned too quickly. Fewer he trusted.

She follows the girl's steps, watches as she scales the wall and disappears over it. She has an elegance to her Ginny'd never achieved before, never begun to understand. But then, that had been the very reason he'd named her the Wraith. And rightly so.

"So," she begins, well after the girl has left, "last time we met, her name was Inej. What's it now?"

"Still Inej," Kaz curtly replies, and there is defiance in his eyes, and something she can't quite put her finger on. "She's not that type of girl."

He's protective over her.

It is nearly endearing to watch.

"What is her type then?" she mocks, enjoying the way he tries not to react. She's the only one who can press his buttons like that. She takes pride in it.

Kaz doesn't answer (she hadn't expected him to), merely raising a distasteful eyebrow, and Ginny shakes her head, still laughing, but it's mere seconds later she sobers down.

"Out with it then," she says. "You wouldn't have come to me if you weren't in a spot of trouble."

"I need you to find him."

"No."

There. There it was. The bomb. The explosive. And that's all she needs to say. All she's thinking. She has a lot she owes Kaz Brekker for, but she isn't going to do this. She isn't going to find him.

When she had said yes to their agreement, she'd thought he'd want her to steal something, kill someone (with all due respect). She was his hitman, woman, and he'd never told her to take an innocent life. Not once. And it was rarely the other.

"No," she says again, and her anger flares up at the dismissive look he still has on his face. "Brekker," she says quietly, "you can go find someone else to do your work for you. I want out if that is what it takes."

"What if I say I have something you'd want?" His voice is quiet, and if she wasn't quite so close to him, she'd have missed it.

"I'd say no."

"You," Kaz smirks, "owe him."

Ginny stills.

"What if I say I have something you could use to clear your debt?"

He'd trapped her. And she'd let him.

"I….." she falters. "It depends. On what you have."

"A location."

Her eyes widen, her breath stills. She knew there were few things he couldn't do. She thought this was one of them.

But a location is what she'd needed. What she has needed all along.

Ginny turns away from him, and slips her hand in her pocket, holding the medallion tight. It had remained her one lead on the man who'd killed her family, the one who'd ruined her life. It had remained her one chance.

This was another. But for this, she'd need him. He was the only one powerful enough.

"How long do you have?" she asks, and she turns around to see Kaz's face change. She smirks.

iii.

She knows where he is. While he'd always had the upper-hand, Kaz had been wrong. Ginny wouldn't have to find him. She's always known. All along.

She owed him. She never let a man she owed out of her sight.

"How long will it take?" Kaz asks, but she only glares at him in answer.

"As long as he needs."

Inej looks at her, then at him. Ginny isn't surprised to see that she no longer had the ice in her eyes, the contempt she regarded her with before. Now the ice had been replaced with fire, and that was almost comforting. The latter was easier to play with, easier to face.

Whatever Kaz had told her, it had clearly been enough to make her hate Ginny a bit less. She'd have to change that.

Ginny glares at him again and in a flash of fury, her hands reach for the knife she'd seen Inej holding earlier that day, snapping it out of her holster, fitting it in under her own belt. It's petty, but petty's what she wants at the moment.

And though Inej moves quickly, Ginny's no less, tripping her up, hoping she'd fall. She doesn't, much as Ginny had expected, and when she looks at her again, the girl's face is contorted in rage, twin daggers clasped in each of her hands.

"Now, now, don't want us to be hasty, do we?" she says, and she's glad her voice is coming out so flippant, so dismissive.

Ginny doesn't flinch as a dagger lodges by her head, against the wall, nicking her ear. A drop of blood trickles down, and part of her is satisfied that she'd been able to get a rise out of the girl.

Blood for blood.

"I'll return this when I come back," she says, twirling the knife in her hand. "If."

"You will give it here. Now."

She wonders why the knife held such value to her. It wasn't flashy enough to bring a good sum in the market, nor was it old enough to be a family trinket. Her thumb runs down its hilt, pausing when it comes by carved letters on its underside.

"Sankta Marya," she reads off the metal. Saint Marya. When she glances up at her again, she's slightly taken aback by the unease clouding her eyes. Behind her, stands Kaz.

Ginny moves quickly then, moving down the alley, under the tunnel, to its end. She'd never meant her thievery, petty as it was, to be of such adversity. She wasn't interested in messing with Brekker's girl. The Wraith.

"I'll be sure to bring her back to you," she calls back as she rounds the corner. Her words hold little value - after all, they are just words.

On second thought, she realizes she doesn't care.

"Or not."

Ginny doesn't miss the clink of the dagger against the wall she'd been standing in front of, a mere second ago.

She can't help but grin.

iv.

They call her the Rogue.

Ginny never wanted to be her.

It's amazing how fast the world can go from bad to total shit storm but there she is, standing in front of the building she knew he'd be in.

But then he's always there. Weighing heavily in her mind. That's perhaps why she wants him off her charts, why she needs to get rid of him in her life.

She doesn't take the entrance. She walks by the walls, her right hand on the rough bricks, feeling them scratch against her palms, sensing the parts where the cement had fallen prey to wreckage. When she finds her place, she wills the bricks there to move, the atoms to rearrange, the molecules to shift. And when they do, she's left with a hole in the wall, big enough for her to get in and get out. She's chosen a spot not travelled much, but even so, as she steps into a room she can only assume as the basement, she wills the bricks back in place.

Ginny's out of the door in a flash, the lockpicker safely back under her belt. She walks down the corridors, up the steps. Her back is to the main entrance as she makes her way to the stairs, and she's thankful she's dyed her hair black, for no one looks twice at her.

When she reaches the top level of the building, his office, or at least, what they call it, it's not hard to find. It's in the corner, and while all the other rooms are flocking with people, his is barren. Empty.

But she knows he's in there.

And she's right, for when she reaches the end, she sees him through the glass, his back towards her and his face towards the window.

Her heart skips a beat, seeing his eyes on the glass, their reflection. She hates that a mere glimpse of him can twist her heart like that, but she doesn't know if it's the familiarity or just the sight of him that unnerves her.

Ginny slips in, not making a sound, and wills the glass to change. She can't afford to let people see them together.

She knows he's aware of her there but when he turns around, she doesn't look at him, for she looks only at the glass, and not him, never him, but he's watching, and she's waiting until the glass is fully opaque. Avoiding him.

"Gin."

Ginny gasps sharply, for it's her name. It's her name, the name he calls her with, and it's the name that's completely and entirely belonged to her. It's different hearing his voice say that name, and it's painfully jarring, reminding, and she hates it.

"Don't call me that."

It's then she looks at him, his green eyes, nothing but reminiscent of what she once had been. They remind her of the sea on a cloudy day, where it reveals little blue, just the green shining through its depths.

He isn't surprised, but his eyes hold emotion she could never begin to understand.

"What should I call you then?"

"Not what you used to." Her words are sharp, inflicting, but she wants it that way.

He nods, but the look in his eyes has changed.

Ginny holds out the medallion, the family crest. The metal is cold against her fingers, a cold that holds the promise of misery. She wishes to be done with it quickly. "Malfoy Manor," she says, but he makes no move to take it from him.

He shakes his head, and she knows he doesn't understand.

"It's where the Mercher is," she explains. "It's where Riddle is."

Information. A location. It's half the job done.

But it doesn't feel any different, none that freeing, and even though logic states that she has, in a way done the job for him, found his guy for him and no longer owes him anything more, it still feels as if she's trapped. Held back. Suffocating.

She doesn't feel any relief.

"How?" he wonders, and when he gently takes the medallion from her, she makes sure their fingers don't touch. "How did you find this?"

"I think the question here should be why I gave you this."

He looks at her then, and there's an unfocused look in his eyes, and she knows he's already there, at the Manor, plotting his play. But then they come back to her, and he looks at her with a longing she'd once been glad to see, but now, it's positively jarring.

She stares back at them, and she knows there's a thousand ways she can answer her question.

But only one she can say.

"This is not a favour," she says, "this is payment. For what I need from you."

And for what you did.

"What do you need me for?"

"Brekker."

"What does…" He stops midway, for he knows he's not getting an answer. Instead, his eyes change, and Ginny feels it's a game, set by him, solved by her, the mystery held in his eyes. Hers are blank, unexpressive, how she'd always wanted them to be. Lately, she'd been regretting it. But his? His, she couldn't begin to explain.

"I have to go," he says, "and I have to finish this."

She struggles to keep her smile in. For everything she owed him, she's always admired how selfless he was. After everything, it just meant she hadn't been wrong about him.

"I know," she breathes in, looking at him. "I know, Harry."

For some reason, she can't bring herself to call him Potter.

[marginalgloss]

the name of the door

‘Every move I send out begins with the same word: You. When I first wrote most of them, so long ago now that it’s incredible to think of it, I had in my mind only a single player, and of course he looked almost exactly like me: not me as I am now, but as I was before the accident. Young and fresh and frightened, and in need of refuge from the world. I was building myself a home on an imaginary planet. I hadn’t considered, then, how big the world was; how many people lived there, how different their lives were from mine. The infinite number of planets spinning in space. I have since traveled great distances, and my sense of the vast oceans of people down here on the Earth, how they drift, is keener. But you, back then, was a singular noun for me, or, at best, a theoretical plural awaiting proof.’

Wolf in White Van is a difficult novel to summarise. I knew next to nothing about its author, John Darnielle, before I began reading. I was aware that he’s a fairly popular musician, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard one of his songs. Being a famous songwriter can cover all kinds of sins in novelistic terms. But by the time I finished the book I felt as though I had been through one of the most solipsistic and forbidding novels I’d read in some time. I don’t mean ‘forbidding’ in the sense of difficulty: the language is mostly quite plain, and the plot is not complicated. I mean that there is something about this novel which looms large over the imagination. It is haunting in its implications.

The book is written from the perspective of Sean, a middle-aged man who suffers from a severe facial deformity that has him living a reclusive life. It will be some time before we learn the cause of his injury. Sean makes his living by running a play-by-mail game of his own invention called Trace Italian. (The name comes from ‘trace italienne’, a certain kind of renaissance fort intended to resist cannon fire. There is much else that seems fortress-like about Sean.) This game takes place in a post-apocalyptic version of America; players write to Sean describing their moves, much like in any other role-playing game, and he writes back with the results. Somehow the player subscriptions pay well enough to keep him going. 

Trace Italian isn’t improvised: every ‘move’ in the game has been charted in advance, meticulously documented in a series of filing cabinets. It is effectively a labyrinthine concept novel, through which players move over the course of days, months, years. Nobody can ever see it all except Sean, and in this respect it is unlike any other book, any other game. For as long as he lives it is inviolable; a perfect private universe where every threat can be contained, every secret can be secured. There are places in it only Sean knows about:

‘…Charts and notebooks lie open around the corpse in a constellation; if you marked its points and drew a line connecting them, you’d have a shape that would later help open a door deep within the Trace, but nobody will ever notice this, or learn the name of the door, which you have to say when you open it or you end up in a blind corridor that traps you for at least four turns, which would probably outrage any players who made it that far. But who knows. What it would be like to make it that far is sheer conjecture…’

The most appealing part of the novel is its detailed portrait of fandom in the pre-internet era. We see how the young Sean was captivated by the genre science fiction and fantasy of the times. Mainstream references like Star Trek and Star Wars take a back seat here — it is all about Friz Leiber, the Gor novels, and weird VHS-era movies like Krull. It’s about finding inspiration in the album art for obscure prog-metal bands, and writing to adverts in magazines to order a cassette tape of music inspired by the Conan books by Robert E. Howard. 

Some of this is the same tone that Stranger Things leant on — kids playing Dungeons and Dragons in the era of the Satanic Panic — but there is something altogether more obscure and threatening going on here. Stranger Things is exciting because of the sense of togetherness engendered by D&D, whereas Sean’s hobbies only serve to lead him further into himself. He never falls in with a gang of like-minded kids, so he becomes a Dungeon Master unto himself. Eventually, under his influence, a young couple go on an adventure through the Trace Italian. They think they are on the trail of something important, much like those kids in the Netflix series. But it doesn’t end well for them. 

There aren’t many characters in this novel outside of Sean. The inside of his head is a bleak, violent place, surreal and unpredictable and paranoid compared to the controlled world of the Trace:

‘There was a small, strange moment during which I had this feeling that someone was filming me, which was ridiculous, but it was that specific��“there’s a camera on me”—and then some hard ancient pushed-down thing, a thing I’d felt or thought or feared a long time ago, something I’d since managed to sheathe in an imaginary scabbard inside myself, erupted through its casing like a bursting cyst. I had to really struggle to recover. Something was dislodging itself, as from a cavern inside my body or brain, and this situation seemed so divorced from waking reality that my own dimensions lost their power to persuade. I craned my great head and saw all that yellow-brown plastic catch the light, little pills glinting like ammunition, and then my brain went to work, juggling and generating several internal voices at once: someone’s filming this; this isn’t real; whoever Sean is, it’s not who I think he is; all the details I think I know about things are lies; somebody is trying to see what I’ll do when I run across these bottles; this is a test but there won’t be any grade later; the tape is rolling but I’m never going to see the tape. It is a terrible thing to feel trapped within a movie whose plot twists are senseless.’ 

Like the players of his game, the reader only exists in the world Sean has created for us. The effect is compelling, and claustrophobic. Sean’s narrative is intense and evocative. He is specific and articulate in his writing, but almost silent in his social life. His thoughts are frantic, anxious, self-perpetuating machinations; we are given very little idea of how he is perceived by society at large. There are moments of contempt and of friendship, but they’re only brief islands of contact in a sea of loneliness.   

It is some time before it becomes evident what Wolf in White Van is really about. The story pivots around two big questions: what happened to Sean’s face? And what happened to that couple on their adventure? But even when the reader is told the facts of those matters, they may not understand the implications. Certainly Sean has no answers for us. There is something forlorn about his world. He writes beautifully, and the reader will likely think him a good person because they can see into his heart and his mind; but there’s a sense that he is somehow beyond help — not because of his disfigurement, but because of his isolation. He is a prisoner inside a game of his own making. And as the pages go on it seems increasingly clear that he will never get out. 

We are accustomed, in novels and films like this, to another party breaking through to the narrator. Something will happen to shake them through their desperation so that their evident state of insecurity doesn’t become all-consuming. They might fall in love. Perhaps there will be a reconciliation, or an epiphany. But that never happens here. The only connections made in Sean’s world are brief and incidental, but the pain from discord resonates below all that. By the end it feels as though the world around the narrator has grown smaller and smaller, draped in a perpetual shroud, while his inner life has expanded out of all knowable proportions; the effect is mesmeric, and terrifying.  

‘…I remember my anger at hearing my real dreams spoken out loud by someone else’s uncomprehending voice. “Number five, sonic hearing,” she said. “Number four, marauder. Number three, power of flight. Number two, money lender. Number one, true vision.” Some of the other kids shot laughing looks at one another. It was horrible. People talk sometimes about standing up for what they believe in, but when I hear people talk like that, it seems like they might as well be talking about time travel, or shape-changing at will. I felt righteousness clotting in my throat, hot acid: the other kids were suppressing laughter and exchanging glances; the whole thing was so funny to them they had to punch their thighs to keep from cackling out loud. None of them had actually made a true list like mine, I thought, though this was conjecture…I remember this scene because it was embarrassing to live through it, and because remembering it is a way of knowing that I am half-true to my beliefs when the time comes. I sit silently defending them and I don’t sell them out, but I put on a face that lets people think I’m on the winning team, that I’m laughing along with them instead of just standing among them. I save the best parts for myself and savor them in silence. Number three, power of flight. Number four, marauder. Enough vision to really see something. A stack of gold coins and a ledger. People want all kinds of things out of life, I knew early on. People with certain sorts of ambitions are safe in the Trace.’

[iamalivenow]

“Take a vacation with me.” Aziraphale looks up from the counter, too busy doing inventory to possibly have heard that correctly. No, certainly Crowley, his friend Crowley who was currently leaning against his biography shelf in a way that was going to result in either him or the shelf meeting the ground in short order, couldn't possibly have- No. Certainly not.

“I'm sorry?” “Take a vacation with me, Angel.” He looks very charming, what with the lean and the new sunglasses that frame his face just so- “Who's going to watch the shop?” He asks, flipping a page in his ledger over without writing down so much as one number in it. “And after everything, so soon-” “Yeah but anyway.” Crowley pushes off of the shelf which does teeter, but not far enough to give Aziraphale a migraine he wouldn't be able to overcome for hours. “Come away with me.” “...Where?” It's just common sense this- knowing these sorts of things ahead of time. “Surprise.” He smirks. Certainly, he wasn't this temptable before. “Who's going to water your plants?” Crowley leans on the counter, elbows digging into his ledger, and he pulls his glasses down his nose, just a bit, until Aziraphale is staring into yellow and orange and gold. “I don't water them, I spritz them.” “Of course you do.” Aziraphale clears his throat, places one hand on the ledge and attempts to tug it free, but Crowley's weight is firmly on it, and crinkling the paper too. “Who's going to spritz them then?” “They'll survive a few days without us.” So it's an us now? “And what if- what if She needs something or- Or perish the thought, Gabriel feels enough guilt to apologize.” “Is that a very Gabriel thing to do?” It only takes him a moment to recall his entire life, from creation to this very conversation, and no, he concludes, it's not a very Gabriel thing to do. “She could need something.” “She can find you anywhere. Come on, Angel.” Crowley leans even more forward, definitely ruining the page his elbow digs into. “Run away with me.” He stares into his friend's eyes, and then in microseconds looks around the shop, the few customers in the stacks a bit further in, the way the sun comes in through the window and lands right on the singular plant Crowley gifted him two weeks ago, for his shop technically re-opening. It sits on the counter, never too far from reach and its own spray bottle sitting just beside it. There's an entire world in this one singular moment. He thinks of every excuse he could make. Not many come to mind, just four, which are, in order:

He was called to head office because he had to officiate the body he currently inside of.

Anathema and Newt actually invited him and only him over for a picnic, and he didn't want to hurt Crowley's feelings.

He had promised Adam a lesson in the celestial bodies and divinity, just in case.

He didn't want to leave the shop again so soon.

Crowley's right eyebrow arcs up in that way that only Crowley's right eyebrow can and Aziraphale, after thinking his choices over every carefully, nods. “A break could be nice.” He says and tries to imagine himself not getting dizzy. “I'll swing by tomorrow then.” And then Crowley, never to be outdone by anyone, even himself, takes Aziraphale's hand in his and runs his lips over Aziraphale's knuckles. “Say noon?” Aziraphale has to psychically stop himself from saying the word noon out loud. “Lovely.” The Bentley rips down the street, and one of his non-customers tells him that they make a very cute couple. It's very hard to imagine being not dizzy when he is, without a doubt, most assuredly dizzy.

…

Aziraphale sits in the passenger side of the Bentley and stares at Crowley's reflection through the windshield. He looks so in awe, so proud of himself, face absolutely alight with joy, that it's hard to look at what's actually past the windshield. “Do you like them?” Crowley asks after what must have been a short eternity, and turns to look at Aziraphale head on. “Utterly remarkable.” He says and pretends to be preoccupied with the stars all around them. “Hung them myself.” Aziraphale turns now, to look at him fully, to try and tell if it's a joke or trick or some other demonic wile. But something in his voice makes it sound like he's being sincere and serious. Maybe it's the softness, or the way Crowley pulls off his glasses and the way his eyes look just a little sad. “Superb job.” Some part of him, in the back of his mind, is rather confused. Normal angels didn't get to do something so important, even principalities didn't baring a few exceptions, and maybe right now in this moment when he is inches away from his arguably sad looking best friend isn't the time to, finally after six thousand years, start wondering who Crowley was before his fall, but it certainly does seem to be the only thing his mind can really rest on. “Ah- You know.” Crowley smiles in a way that doesn't reach his eyes. “Barely any effort.” “They are-” Aziraphale forces himself to look away from the spectacle and look at the stars. They really are remarkable, glorious blues and reds and yellows and whites hanging in just the perfect pattern to make them look random. But he can see the little patterns, here and there, a little face just obscured by a star cradle and a little love heart tilted on its side. “They're resplendent.” And then, struck by a fit of brazenness, he reaches out and takes Crowley's hand. Gives it a squeeze.   When Crowley smiles this time, it most certainly reaches his eyes.

…

Aziraphale is enjoying his vacation tremendously. It's all very curious, the life forms this far from earth are not fully developed yet, perhaps not under Her immediate vigilance yet, so every interaction leaves them marveling in awe at the angel and Aziraphale would be lying if he wasn't succumbing to pride. He was enjoying his vacation immensely. Crowley showed  him oceans that were so many different colors, and filled with so many wonderful things that it's almost tempting to just move here, leave it all behind, and just lay in the sand with his best and very funny and lovely friend, who clearly had very good taste in vacation destinations and very good taste in planetary creation. This was undoubtedly the best vacation he's ever had. And it still wasn't enough to get him to stop wondering. If he would be home, he would be pouring over thousands of texts, maybe even risk a trip to the home office and ask Gabriel or Uriel or Michael outright. Certainly, they owed him a favor of some kind. Or maybe they would want him to leave so quickly they'd just blurt out an answer and eject him. His feelings wouldn't even be hurt. On the other hand, he could ask. “The only shame- The only shame.” Crowley gives a short sort of laugh beside him. “With the underdeveloped species business. No alcohol yet.” But it does seem very rude. “Some wine right now would be phenomenal,” Aziraphale says in a way that he hopes sounds invested in the conversation. He wouldn't want to be asked, if he was in this situation. “I'd kill for a margarita.” Crowley sits up, sand trailing off of his back. Aziraphale stares because it really is a wonderful back and it doesn't have any scars above the shoulder blades or below the shoulder blades or anywhere on his lower back either. “Well-” “We could always go back.” He says offhandedly. “I can buy you a margarita. No murder required.” Not that he would in the first place. He is rather nice, for a demon, isn't he? What angel was nice? There had to be at least a few. Right?

…

He comes back home a week later with a tan. “It suits you.” Crowley insists who's still the same shade of skin he was when they left. “Really, it does. Brings out your eyes.” Aziraphale smiles because that's so very easy to do. They come back late, sun already set, and Crowley, ever the gentleman, walks him to the door of his shop. It looks fairly unlooted, everything right where he left it. Aziraphale's plant just as shiny and healthy as it was how ever long the vacation had lasted for. He does walk over and mist it all the same while Crowley is very busy leaning against the door frame. “Would you like to come in? Spend the night catching up on all of those missed margaritas?” “I would, but I've not yelled at my plants for a while.” “Ah. And that's... very important. Yelling at plants.” “How are they meant to grow otherwise?” Aziraphale glances at the plant on the counter. It seems to have been doing just fine on it's one, no yelling required. “Right, of course.” He nods slowly. “Good night then?” “Good night, Angel.” The second the door closes behind him he has three bibles open, and starts the arduous cross-referencing because, surely, there's an answer in here somewhere isn't there? There simply must be.

…

“Do you remember?” “Does it matter?” Does it- Does it matter if the demon he had been spending his life with used to be an archangel? Does it matter that Raphael's name had been shunted aside and forgotten by everyone who wasn't looking for it? Does it matter that Aziraphale spent a month of his time pouring through texts and books and scrolls trying to find an answer to who hung those resplendent stars in the sky eons ago? Does it really matter that if Aziraphale knew then, at the garden, that everything probably would have been so very very very different between them? “No. Suppose not.” They're in a lovely park, sitting on a picnic blanket and watching humans walk by. They have chilled champagne and little blueberry tarts that Aziraphale got from this tiny bakery in Ireland. He had leaned in to ask Crowley, shoulder against shoulder, lips just a few tiny spaces away from Crowley's ear. “The name thing- the name thing is weird, isn't it?” “Hm?” “Yours and, well.” Crowley waves a hand, curling his wrist. Oh- Oh, yes. “A bit.” He leans away, body flushed as he stares at Crowley's long pretty fingers. “Crowley is a good name.” “I think so too. Obviously. Otherwise-” “Why would you have picked it?” Crowley laughs and turns his head and kisses Aziraphale. Thank everything good and awful and altogether neutral in the entire wide world that he doesn't actually have to breathe.

[sanrionharbor-blog]

Sansa and Tyrion’s Character Arcs (Part I: Tyrion)

Being a writer, I’ve been pouring through Shawn Coyne’s The Story Grid over the past two weeks. One of the points he makes is that every part of a story–from beat to arc–has the same 5 elements: inciting incident, complication, crisis, climax, resolution.

And being as obsessed as I am with Sansa and Tyrion of GOT in particular, I thought I’d use the hey-day of the series season finale episodes to indulge in some character metas. 

We’re going to (mainly) focus on the inciting incident.

So, not only does GOT have an overarching inciting incident/complication/crisis/climax/resolution that it’s moving towards, but each season has them, each episode/chapter has them, each  subplot has them, and each character has them.

According to Shawn Coyne, an inciting incident promises one thing: “…the ending.”

So let’s dive a little deeper and see what Sansa’s inciting incident and Tyrion’s inciting incident tells us about them. I’m writing separate posts since they’re both long–first up is Tyrion!

Tyrion

To start on a side note that will eventually get to the point:

I really wonder if show-Tyrion and book-Tyrion can come to the same conclusion. 

Book-Tyrion is much more morally grey than show-Tyrion, for one. They make different decisions after the Purple Wedding (in the show Tyrion is notably celibate whereas book-Tyrion hits an all-time low and is not above sleeping with drugged-up, unresponsive prostitutes–though he manages to empathize with them, he still uses them to run from his own darkness). 

Now, I’m equally invested in both versions of the character and believe they have the same arc/themes overall. So on one hand I can see them playing out beat-by-beat, just with different palettes, if you would, but only because of the power of the inciting incident:

So, an inciting incident does more than promise an ending–it sets the character on a path of no return. So, more than a character’s introduction, it’s when their story first goes down an irreversible path.

Furthermore, an inciting incident is called an incident for a reason: it’s not necessarily a decision made by a character, but something that happens to him (but more on that in a minute).

Tyrion’s Introduction

First we’ll note Tyrion’s introduction in the book:

“Jon found it hard to look away from [Jaime]. This is what a king should look like, he thought to himself as the man passed.

Then he saw the other one, waddling along half-hidden by his brother’s side. Tyrion Lannister, the youngest of Lord Twyin’s brood and by far the ugliest. All that the gods had given to Cersei and Jaime, they had denied Tyrion. He was a dwarf, half his brother’s height, struggling to keep pace on stunted legs….one green eye and one black one peered out from under a lanky fall of hair so blond it seemed white. Jon watched him with fascination.”

Later, still in the same chapter:

“The dwarf grinned down at [Jon]. ‘Is that animal a wolf?’

‘A direwolf,’ Jon said. ‘His name is Ghost….what are you doing up there? Why aren’t you at the feast ?’

‘Too hot, too noisy, and I’d drunk too much wine,’ the dwarf told him. ‘…might I have a closer look at your wolf?’

…he pushed himself off the ledge into empty air. Jon gasped, then watched with awe as Tyrion Lannister spun around in a tight ball, landed lightly on his hands, then vaulted backward.

Ghost backed away from him uncertainly.

The dwarf dusted himself off and laughed. ‘I believe I’ve frightened your wolf. My apologies.’”

They talk a little more, and it’s interesting to note that Tyrion isn’t threatened by Ghost, merely fascinated, and he correctly deduces that Ghost is more shy than harmful, despite Ghost baring his teeth. This could be foreshadowing that the Lannisters will have dominion over the Starks soon, but Tyrion was never a player in that. Despite his loyalties to his family, he was the one that reached out to Jon when he saw Jon was crying, he was the one who bonded with Jon at the wall and honored Jon’s request to take care of Bran, he was the one who took the time to design a saddle for Bran, and who later treated Sansa with dignity despite every cultural and social protocol having taught him to do the opposite.

No, I think this has more to do with Tyrion’s fascination with direwolves, and perhaps the Wolf, in general. I also believe it’s foreshadowing (not the deliberate kind, but the instinctual kind that most writers aren’t even aware of), to Tyrion’s possible later loyalty/ally status with the Stark’s. More on that when we get to his first POV.

Tyrion’s First POV Chapter

The very first POV that features Tyrion ends on this line (I know most of you have read it before):

“When he opened the door, the light from within threw his shadow clear across the yard, and for just a moment, Tyrion Lannister stood tall as a king.”

And then there is Tyrion’s first chapter written in his POV–where certain details stand out to me [all emphases mine]:

“Somewhere in the great stone maze of Winterfell, a wolf howled. The sound hung over the castle like a flag of mourning…something about the howling of a wolf took a man right out of his here and now and left him in a dark forest of the mind, running naked before the pack.”

That’s the opening of Tyrion’s first POV. No lion metaphors here. Instead, Tyrion briefly imagines being part of a wolf pack–is he running in front as a leader, naked and free and accepted, or because he’s being chased down, naked and hunted and vulnerable? 

Regardless, the chapter ends here:

“‘My sweet brother,” [Jaime] said darkly, “there are times you give me cause to wonder whose side you are on,”

Tyrion’s mouth was full of bread and fish. He took a swallow of strong black beer to wash it all down, and grinned up wolfishly at Jaime. ‘Why, Jaime, my sweet brother,’ he said, ‘you wound me. You know how much I love my family.’”

For some reason, Tyrion is metaphorically identifying with wolves. These exchanges also tune us into the hint of whimsy and empathy in his character, which co-exists with his book-smart/world-weary outlook. 

Still, neither of these moments include Tyrion’s inciting incident. No, Tyrion’s inciting incident is a direct result of ASOIAF’s inciting incident: the moment Catelyn Stark receives a letter from her sister Lysa Arryn about the death of Jon Arryn, Lord Paramount of the Vale and Hand to the King.

This is powerful stuff in itself, even if the death had been natural. But we’re about to be lead through a political spiderweb that’s being spun over a dark, fuzzy expanse; and we can only make out what that darkness is when the spiderweb isn’t so clearly in focus: Winter, and not just any Winter, but the Long Night. 

This is all happening at once, and Tyrion is actually an early witness to the complementary foci of ASOIAF:

Myth: He visits the Wall with Jon Snow and, while he doesn’t encounter any wights, he does encounter several people who’re convinced about such things. He’s skeptical, but we learn over time that Tyrion is a closeted romantic. Sure, he’s reading up on the lives of Maesters and pouring through ledgers and history books half the time–but he’s also obsessed with true love and handsome knights and dragons.

Humanity: He’s a casualty of Jon Arryn’s murder and Catelyn Stark’s having been deceived (though Catelyn acts heroically based on what she believes to be the truth). He’s kidnapped by Lady Stark and forced to stand trial for two murders he did not commit. This is his inciting incident. It’s what gets Tywin to declare war on the Starks and what inadvertently puts Tyrion in the pathway of both Bronn and Shae. It leads him to his newfound confidence as a military strategist, even as a pseudo-knight, in subsequent battles–including the one that costs him his nose, and any illusion that his looks could be improved or his stature increased by acting like a knight. Acting like a knight (like Jaime, like the son his father wanted, like the heroes Tyrion grew up reading about) did not win him the approval of Tywin, the adoration of the people, the reality of knighthood, or the true affection of any lady. And we know how his story goes from here.

But none of it would have happened without Tyrion’s Inciting Incident. And he had no choice in the matter either. This was his point of no return.

So, what are the themes established here?

Themes from his introduction:

-Even though he’s compared unfavorably to his brother Jaime, who is described as “what kings should look like,” the POV ends with Tyrion standing “tall as a king.” So, in a word, kingliness. 

-His intro through Jon’s eyes establishes him as larger than life, despite his size. He’s breezy, irreverent, whip-smart, aware of his status (as a Lannister and as a pariah), and even surprisingly acrobatic (or at the very least self-sufficient, and possessing the element of surprise). He’s also empathetic–he gives Jon advice on how to navigate the world and finds common place between them. Remember, he’s a noble and Jon is a bastard. He’s under no obligation to treat him kindly. It’s simply his character; one of Tyrion’s better qualities. 

-In short, Tyrion fulfills a role as: outcast (dwarf) and elite (Lannister noble), adviser (or Hand), jester (“Generations of capering fools in motley…’), and, at least inwardly, a king. And all of these are mythical archetypes and play well into the fantasy tropes that GRRM is exploring, deconstructing, and reconstructing.

-I also highlighted the part about Tyrion’s one black eye and one green, and his hair so pale it was almost white. This has less bearing in the TV show, obviously, but many of these clues not only point out his physical otherness, but can symbolically point to:

Looking at the world from two perspectives

Divided loyalties (the green eyes of the Lannister’s, and that one dark eye–dark like the Stark’s?)

Or does it represent a divided lineage?

B/C, though I’m not sold on the theory, one wonders if the “Tyrion as the third head of the dragon” isn’t hinted through his white-blond hair? Yet another secret Targaryen?

Themes from his first POV chapter:

-Tyrion finds it easy to identify with the Wolf (and yes, with a capital ‘W,’ encompassing the Starks, the direwolves, the archetype). And throughout the story he easily empathizes with the Starks, despite the Shakespearean-level rift between his family and theirs.

-He loves his family. But he is also separate from his family. 

-Tyrion’s strength (and weakness) will be his mind

Themes from his inciting incident:

-I see themes of justice/injustice, truth/deception, and acceptance/prejudice.

-In fact, Catelyn Stark seizes him with these words: “…I call upon you to seize him and help me return him to Winterfell to await the king’s justice.”

-To return to Winterfell. 

-To await the king’s justice.

Tyrion: The Ending Is In The Beginning

So this essay has been largely book-focused. The biggest differences between book-Tyrion and show-Tyrion, in the first arc anyway, are simply Tyrion’s sex appeal. Let’s be honest. In the show, his introduction comes by way of brothel (and it’s also a way to introduce the show-only character, Roz), whereas in the books it comes by way of unfavorable comparison with his brother. Peter Dinklage is also very handsome, and I’m not complaining AT ALL about his casting (because I love him), and D&D had a limited range to pick from anyway, but Tyrion in the show is more attractive and that colors several scenes–especially the ones with Shae and Sansa.

But it doesn’t matter that much in the end. Because the point is that Tyrion’s arc isn’t about his overall attractiveness (but physicality, yes). Tyrion is still playing roles that are traditionally given to conventionally handsome characters, not just to outsiders or “monstrous” archetypes. 

So the interesting part is that his looks play a tangential role, but not a main one. His physicality is always at play, but not so much his attractiveness. For example, both show and book Tywin hate that their son is a dwarf; the ugliness of book-Tyrion is just the T.P. at the bottom of Tywin’s ill-fitting shoe. Again, tangential. It changes the palettes of book and show Tyrion’s overall story visual, but not the actual shape of their story.

So regardless of the differences between the show and the book, Tyrion’s ending can still be found in the book A Game of Thrones’. And not only because that’s a universal law of storytelling (the inciting incident promises the ending) but it’s exactly what George R.R. Martin has confirmed. 

So what can we infer about Tyrion’s ending from his beginning?

Here is where we find Tyrion at the end of season 1 of GOT and in his last POV in the first book of ASOIAF [all emphases mine]:

In the wake of Jaime’s kidnapping, Tywin has just told Tyrion he’s sending him to King’s Landing. 

“It was the last thing Tyrion Lannister would ever have anticipated. He reached for his wine, and considered for a moment as he sipped. ‘And what am I to do there?’

‘Rule,’ his father said curtly.

Tyrion hooted with laughter. ‘My sweet sister might have a word or two to say about that!’

That part about Cersei seems more pertinent now that we’re heading into Season 8 of Game of Thrones and she’s a prominent villain. She’s at least a major obstacle in Tyrion’s current story line (and, in fact, always has been). 

But more importantly is his father’s command to rule. Tyrion Lannister is groomed for rulership throughout his story, and this will probably be his destiny: whether that come in the capacity of being king or some other kind of leader. Perhaps there won’t even be an Iron Throne at the end of all of this, but Tyrion, worldly and well-traveled and ruthless and empathetic as he is, could be a spearhead for a new political system. Perhaps the Magna Carta of Westeros is coming? 

Let’s hark back to Tyrion’s inciting incident. He was going to await the king’s justice. What if the king’s justice turns out to be Tyrion’s justice? And Tyrion, after being held accountable all his life for things he had not done wrong (though not being punished for the things he has done wrong–after all, he’s no saint), will find his justice by a king, someway-somehow. Either with Tyrion as said King, or by being Hand to just such a King, or even, tragically, by finally facing a justice he cannot escape–at the hands of a king. (Or Queen). 

Tyrion’s arc will end when he is finally taken off trial. He thought he’d finally made it when he was free of his father’s (physical) shadow and when he found full acceptance (he thought) with Daenerys. But here’s where Tyrion’s theme of divided loyalties comes into play. He’s been struggling with finding where he stands throughout his storyline. Even when he was advising for Dany, he was still hoping that Cersei had the capacity for change. I think what he loved most about Cersei was her motherly instincts, her children (sans Joffrey). And he probably does feel guilt over Myrcella’s death. So Tyrion is seeking justice; he wants Cersei’s baby to live because he loves him/her instinctually, because it “atones” for the other children, because blood runs thicker than water, because he won’t be the reason the Lannister name is snuffed out. 

“…To return to Winterfell and await the king’s justice.”

In Season 8, Tyrion does return to Winterfell. If there were a third trial (orchestrated perhaps by Daenerys or by Cersei), it would probably take place at King’s Landing or the Dragon Pit, but there’s still the fact that Tyrion’s story is inextricably linked with Winterfell. 

He is particularly bound up in the stories of Bran, Sansa, and Jon. And in a series inspired by the War of the Roses, he could be the link that brings the Lannisters (Lancasters) and Starks (Yorks) to true peace. To finally establish justice and resolve the conflict that started this whole saga. 

Tyrion has been denounced in two trials and made to suffer consequences to his agency and reputation, despite the deception at play. His agency and reputation still need restoring. He still has neither of these things with Daenerys. 

He needs to emerge victorious from a third trial. Whether that third trial is literal or metaphorical.  It’s very possible that Tyrion will finally stand trial for a murder he is guilty of: Cersei could put him on trial for the murder of Tywin Lannister, and Tyrion will have to face the spiritual shadow of his father and the reality of his guilt once and for all. 

This third trial will establish Tyrion’s character; it will close his arc. Whether he dies physically or not, he will be spiritually enlightened/restored. 

And I’d have to agree with Peter Dinklage–that would be a really beautiful end for Tyrion Lannister, however it plays out. 

(Please share your thoughts as I am OBSESSED with Tyrion theories). 

(Next Up: Sansa Stark). 

[elspethsunschampion]

Infernal Contract

A/N: My husband is studying to be an accountant, and he, uh, expounded on some things today that turned into a minific. As per usual for my stories, I recommend not reading if you ship Jaciana or dislike Liliana being portrayed in a not-terribly-sympathetic light.

Rating: T

Summary:   Liliana really should have read the fine print. Jace makes it a point to explain why.

If you enjoy my stories, please consider buying me a coffee :)

         The galley of the Weatherlight was crowded and noisy. Gideon watched Jace, who was practically inhaling a portion of soup, drooping slightly, and looking generally exhausted. He had appeared several feet above the deck a few hours ago, told them, “Sorry, amnesia issues again,” and promptly gone to sleep. Now he had tottered down and asked for food, promising Gideon he would give a more complete description when he was feeling a little better. Curious and concerned though he was, Gideon knew there was no point in trying to hurry him. Whatever had happened, Jace looked simultaneously better than Gideon had ever seen him—a new intensity, a new spring in his step—and also more exhausted and wrecked.

           “I cannot wait to kill that demon,” the two of them heard, rising over the crowd. Liliana’s voice. Jace winced slightly—one thing he had made extremely clear was that he did not want to deal with Liliana at all, and Gideon was not inclined to force him. Whether or not the enchantress might be trying to make up for past misdeeds had nothing to do with whether anyone who had been previously hurt by her needed to have anything to do with her whatsoever, and the hints about her involvement with Jace had been particularly—discomforting. So Gideon was sitting with Jace, and Liliana and Chandra were on the other side of the room. “I just cannot wait,” Liliana’s voice said clearly, “to call my soul my own again. Once I get rid of this lease—”

           Gideon nearly wound his neck backwards with the suddenness of his turn; next to him, Jace’s head had snapped to the side as well. “Lease?” both of them said. Gideon got up. Jace made an explosive noise and then followed.

           “You leased your soul?” Jace demanded without preamble as they fetched up at the other table.

           Liliana blinked up at him. “Um,” she said, clearly taken aback. “You knew that.”

           “No, no, no.” Jace shook his head. “No, you told me you sold your soul.”

           She stared, clearly uncomprehending. “Leased, sold, what’s the difference?”

           “Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me!” Jace threw his hands into the air and stalked out of the room.

           Gideon, also perturbed, but at least a little calmer, leaned over her. “Liliana,” he said. “This is very important. Did you sell your soul, or did you lease it?”

           “I don’t understand,” she murmured, but she could apparently tell from his tone of voice that he was deadly serious. “I…believe the contract said ‘lease’, although I could check.”

           Putting one hand over his face, Gideon took a long, deep breath, but before he could figure out where to begin, Jace breezed back into the room, holding an extremely thick volume he must have gotten out of the ship’s library, which he slammed down onto the table so hard that Chandra, Liliana, and Gideon all jumped. He flipped it open and shoved it under Liliana’s nose. “This is the definition of a capital lease,” he said. “A capital lease is a lease in which the lessor only finances the leased asset, and all other rights of ownership transfer to the lessee. This results in the recordation of the asset as the lessee's property in its general ledger, as a fixed asset.”

           “Are you trying to tell me something, because whatever it is, I don’t understand it,” Liliana said crossly.

           “Jace—” Gideon tried, but Jace held up a finger and shook his head.

           “I shouldn’t even be surprised,” he sighed. “Liliana. Let’s say I’m a demon. I want a soul. The soul is an asset that I acquire from you.”  

           “Yes! I know! I want it back!”

           “No,” Jace said. “You really don’t. Because you still own your soul. That’s what a lease means. I acquire the asset from you—it goes into my books—but you are still the owner. You are the lessor, and I am the lessee.”

           “So you get ownership, it says so right there!”

           “If I keep paying you. Good god, Liliana, have you never heard someone say ‘I can’t believe he’s dead, he owed me money’?”

           She opened her mouth and then closed it again. “Ah—well—that is—”

           “There is a reason people generally do not want to kill their debtors. You leased your soul. The demons keep it as long as they keep paying you for it with your youth. If they are dead—I’d like you to pay very close attention to this, because it is apparently difficult for you—if they’re dead, they can’t pay you anymore.”

           Gideon winced slightly at the dawning horror on Liliana’s face. “You—you mean—”

           “Yes, to everyone’s utter astonishment, the demons weren’t expecting you to kill them because it doesn’t help you at all. It just means they’ll be forced to default on the contract because you can’t fulfill a payment on a contract when you’re dead.”

           “Gideon—” Liliana turned to him, wringing her hands, face pale, and he was forced to nod.

           “Standard contract magic,” he said. “The hieromancy is, um. Relatively straightforward.”

           “Oh,” Liliana said.

           “Yeah,” Jace agreed.

           She rallied slightly. “But—but I thought that I gave them my soul, and they gave me…youth.”

           Jace shrugged. “Not if it’s a lease,” he said. “And maybe this is just what I should have expected. You never did have a very good grasp on taking care of assets, did you?”

           Liliana’s hands were white-knuckled as she stared at the table. “What am I going to do?” she asked quietly.

           “That,” Jace said, with uncharacteristic viciousness, “is really not my problem anymore.” Trembling slightly, he turned and stalked away from the table, shaking his head and muttering under his breath.

           Gideon took another deep breath. “All right,” he said steadily. “Change of plans.”

           “Can you help?” Liliana burst out, hands twisting and twisting around one another. “Can you—you’re a hieromancer—I-I don’t—I don’t want to die, Gideon.”

           “You’re going to need someone with a lot more skill than I have,” Gideon told her. “It’s not going to be easy—not without Jace’s help—” and he wasn’t going to ask Jace for help, there was definitely too much pain there, “—but there is someone I know who might have—an angle.”

           Liliana looked up, hoping dawning in her eyes. “Who?”

           “An expert contract negotiator. Teysa Karlov.”

[scenes-in-between]

Mulder’s Journal

Entry One (Millennium):

Scully,  Dana,

I’ve been sitting here for close to an hour now, just trying to find the words. Trying to figure out how to tell you what I learned today.

And then I remembered. You wrote to me in a journal, once. Maybe it’s fitting that I do the same, now. At the very least, maybe it will help me make sense of things enough in my head that I can tell you out loud. Once I can find the words, then I just have to find the courage to say them.

Unfortunately, that might be the hardest part.

Maybe it’s because I’m not ready to believe it yet, myself. More likely it’s because I can’t bring myself to do anything that might dampen the beautiful light in your eyes. You’ve been through more than enough pain for one lifetime; how could I possibly justify causing you more?

Jesus, you’re not even here and I’m still stalling.

Okay. Here it is in black and white: There’s something wrong with my brain. I’m sick.

The doctors don’t know what it is, but as of today, they know some of the things it’s not. It’s not cancer or an aneurysm. It’s not whatever happened before with the artifact. It’s not multiple sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s or Alzheimer’s. I should be relieved, but… better the devil you know, right?

So, they don’t know what’s wrong with me. They’re going to do some more tests soon. And I know I should tell you. Hell, if it were you, I’d want to know. When you were sick, before, I hated being in the dark. So I get it, and I’ll tell you. I will. It’s just…

You were so happy this morning. It’s a brand new year, and we wrapped up that case last night (zombies, Scully, we fought actual zombies and won, I just want you to remember that), and then it was so late by the time we got back to my apartment that you actually stayed over. You woke up in my bed this morning, which is undeniably the best way I’ve ever started a new year, and I got to make you breakfast (not bad for a guy with one fully functional arm) and take you back to bed again after. It was too perfect to ruin, to tell you that I had an appointment to get my brain checked out this afternoon. And then after, once I had my laundry list of non-answers… I still don’t know how to break it to you.

I’m a coward, Dana. You’ll be here soon, and I had every intention of telling you tonight, and writing this out was supposed to help, but all it’s done is remind me how beautiful your smile is, how happy you’ve been these past few weeks. I can’t take that away from you. Not yet. Besides, maybe the doctors will have more answers for me after the next appointment. It can wait a little longer.

I’ll tell you soon. I promise. Just not yet.

Entry Two (Rush):

I chickened out again, Dana.

The wine was supposed to help. I got the call just before I left the office. My latest test results are, apparently, not exactly promising. It’s strange though, because I feel fine. Actually, I feel better than fine. I haven’t had a headache since Christmas, and if I hadn’t gone to the hospital then, I probably wouldn’t know anything was wrong at all.

I’m not sure if that would be better or worse, to be ignorant of the danger supposedly lurking in my brain, but also free from having every happy moment in my life tainted by worry.

There have been a hell of a lot of happy moments, lately.

But anyway. The doctor called that evening after we got back from Pittsfield. He wants to put me on some drug they use for Lou Gehrig's, something to slow the degeneration in the brain. It won't stop it, but it might help. And at this point, it's the only thing he can think of to try, since he still doesn't know what exactly is wrong with me.

I wanted to talk to you about it. It's hard to know what to think about any of this without hearing your opinion. So instead of going home that night, I picked up my dry cleaning and some wine and drove to your place instead. I was going to to fill you in on everything, come clean about all of it. A little liquid courage to help things along, etc.

Clearly that all worked out really well.

It's hard to say this without sounding like I'm blaming you, Dana, but I promise that I'm not. This is on me. I’m the one who can't look you in the eye and tell you…

The thing is, I know I’m only making things worse by putting it off. The longer I keep this from you, the more upset you’re going to be when I finally do tell you. And I’ve waited too long already. So now I’m thinking about how hurt you’ll be on top of how upset the news itself might make you, and I just… how can I bring you that much pain when the alternative is to steal a few more moments of happiness? It already took us so long to get here; it feels far too soon to wreck everything.

It’s too bad we never figured out how those kids were able to do what they did. If there were ever a reason to want to stop time, to take full advantage of every moment, wouldn’t this be it? I know, I know. We’re not teenagers, and the physical toll would be even greater on us than it was on Max. But it’s still a pretty thought.

(You know, for what it’s worth, you are absolutely still a Betty. Forget “back in the day.” Granted, I will admit I am not a hundred percent sure what a Betty is, but I take it to be complimentary.)

Anyway, if the doctors are right, and my decline is inevitable, then there will come a point at which I can no longer hide this from you. And when that happens, I won’t expect your forgiveness for not telling you sooner, but maybe I can hand you this journal and you will understand, at least a little, why I put it off as long as I did. I might be able to fool myself into thinking it’s for your sake, but I know that’s not the truth.

It’s for mine.

Entry Three (The Goldberg Variation):

You know, I never really thought about luck in terms of balance before. But in a way, seeing it play out right in front of us with Henry Weems, it makes a certain sort of sense. What if what we observed with Henry is just a really, really exaggerated version of what the rest of us experience every day? What if it’s just that the give and take of good luck and bad is usually so subtle that we don’t even notice it? After all, who’s going to keep track of whether the number of times you find a good parking space or catch the elevator right on time matches up exactly with how often you drop your keys or get a papercut?

It stands to reason, then, that there would be balance in the big things too. “Congratulations! You get a chance to be with the most amazing woman you’ve ever met! There’s just one catch… you also get a brain disorder so rare no one’s ever heard of it, and it’s probably going to kill you before the year’s out. Balance!”

It’s just that with Henry, everything is a big thing, and the negatives in his ledger get printed in someone else’s instead. Hell of a neat trick. And it’s that very lack of internal balance that makes him stand out so much.

And to think… it all started when he survived a plane crash he shouldn’t have. Before that, he was just like the rest of us. Does that mean the possibility exists to manufacture circumstances like his? Sure, the odds against it would be astronomical, and I’m not sure I’d want to gamble with the level of risk that would seem to be required, but it’s almost impossible not to wonder. Then again, what kind of gift is luck like his, when he has to watch everyone around him suffer? Even if I knew for sure it could be orchestrated, I don’t think I could go through with it, especially if it meant that you would bear the burden of my good fortune.

This journal was supposed to be about my brain thing, but I don’t really have anything new to write about on that front. I haven’t had the next set of scans yet, to see if the new medication is helping. I guess I just really had a lot of thoughts about this balance of luck thing, and I couldn’t share them with you out loud today without spilling everything else. I hate having to censor myself with you.

(Yes, I know exactly how absurd that sounds. I know I chose this. Doesn’t mean I can’t hate it.)

Entry Four (Orison):

I can’t stop thinking about how I might not be there the next time something like this happens. It didn't really hit me until after we got back to my place, when you were getting in the shower. Even if you got through the attack without me (and yes, I know you are more than capable of taking care of yourself, no question), you would have been all alone after. And the thought of that breaks my heart.

I know, I need to stop thinking like this. It's still way too early to know whether or not the medication is helping. For all I know, it might be. Maybe I'll get better, and you won't be left alone after all.

Or maybe I’ll get hit by a truck tomorrow. Nothing is certain. It’s stupid to get too caught up in hypotheticals.

Sometimes I wish I could believe, as you do, that there is a God, that we are all subject to some divine plan. Most of the time that isn’t actually a comforting thought to me, but sometimes… sometimes it would be nice to surrender control and responsibility to something greater than any of us. To trust that even when terrible things happen, it is somehow in the service of some greater good.

I want to believe in so many things, Dana. But sometimes wanting isn’t enough.

One thing I do believe is that, no matter what you might think happened with Donnie Pfaster, your actions were just. If you acted without thinking, it was out of instinct, not because some malign entity was pulling the strings. (Or, I suppose, the trigger.) You stopped a killer, undoubtedly saved lives.

In my book, that makes you a destroyer of evil, not its agent.

Entry Five (Signs & Wonders):

I don’t know how I got out of that one without you finding out. I thought for sure something would show up in a blood test and you’d read it in my chart, or you’d see that I had asked the doctor about continuing my medication while undergoing the antivenin treatment. Hell, I even tried to tell you myself, when we were waiting for the ambulance, but I guess you just thought I was out of my mind.

And I should’ve said something afterward, I know. I mean, I did try. Just not hard enough. When the damned EKG gave away how nervous I was… well, it’s no excuse. I should have owned up to it instead of letting you think I was just overtaxed and needed to rest.

The plane ride home wasn’t the time or the place. Maybe that’s no excuse either, I don’t know.

Next week I have another set of scans. It’s probably too much to hope for, that there will be a noticeable difference. I’ve only been on the medication a few weeks. At the least, I can hope they don’t show I’m getting worse. If I am… if the meds aren’t helping at all and I’m continuing to decline, I’ll quit stalling. No more excuses.

Entry Six (En Ami):

I had hoped to never have to write in this journal again, Dana. I foolishly believed I had won, or dodged a bullet at least. I guess I only heard what I wanted to hear.

Turns out that “not worse” is not the same thing as “better.”

I know I made a lot of promises. I hope one day you will understand why I’m continuing to break them now.

If I had never told you about the ova I kept, if you had simply carried on exploring other options, you would have been spared all that needless heartache. You might have conceived on the first try with a donor egg and the sperm of a man not slowly dying of some unprecedented brain disease. Now I fear you might be unwilling to try again, after how badly this went.

The doctors say they can’t help me. I’ve got a whole drawer of cases that say doctors aren’t the only option. Once I have exhausted those avenues too, or once the progression of my condition is such that I can no longer hide it from you, that is when I will tell you.

I know that you already feel bad about the empty disc, about being promised this miracle cure only to have it yanked away like the football in a Peanuts comic strip. I remember what it was like, finding the chip that cured your cancer. I remember what it felt like when I thought I’d been deceived too, finding a vial filled with water instead of some miracle elixir I thought I was after. To tell you now that you maybe could have had something that would cure me… I won’t compound your frustration and guilt. I won’t do it.

I was angry when you went off alone with him, but if I'm honest, I was really just afraid. Afraid you wouldn't see him for the snake he is, afraid he would dangle promises in front of you all while leading you to slaughter like a sacrificial lamb.

I should have given you more credit. I'm sorry I let my fear turn me into an asshole.

I’m embarking out on my own now for the same reasons you did these past few days. I want to try to fix this without you getting hurt. I don’t know if I will succeed, but I have to try.

Entry Seven (The Gift/Chimera):

I’m hesitant to write this down because it’s probably too good to be true. But if, for some reason, I don’t manage to return from this trip, I want there to be a record. I want you to know why I left.

I’m going to Squamash, Pennsylvania tomorrow. I’ve learned of the existence of a creature known as a soul-eater. It reportedly has the power to take away a person’s illness, to consume and remove any disease. The process by which it manages this is not without risks, but I believe they are risks worth taking. Because if this works, Dana… if it works, then I’m cured, and that is worth just about any risk.

***

I couldn’t do it.

I wanted so badly for it to work, for it to be the solution to my problem. But once I looked into his eyes, Dana, I couldn’t go through with it. I said a cure would be worth any risk, but what I didn’t realize was that it wasn’t about that at all.

Every ailment he healed, he absorbed. Every suffering he eased, he bore himself, instead. He may have been something inhuman, but the people who tortured him for their own gain, they were the true monsters. I couldn’t be party to that.

I know this case we’re on seems to barely qualify as an X-File. I know what I’m putting you through for the sake of having an excuse to disappear for eight hours as we rotate shifts on the stakeout. And for it all to have been for nothing in the end.

I will find a way to make it up to you, I promise.

My neurologist told me about a specialist in England who’s developing a new form of gene therapy that might help me. I don’t really understand all the specifics, but my doctor seems to think it sounds promising. That’s going to be the next thing I try, once I can make the arrangements to get over there. I’m not giving up.

Entry Eight (Je Souhaite):

I suppose, in the end, it all makes a twisted sort of sense. Be careful what you wish for and all that. Still, it’s too bad, isn’t it? Too bad you can’t just wish away all the world’s ills. Or even, for that matter, ills far smaller and more personal.

I don’t know if it’s just that this particular jinni had a penchant for screwing with people or if it was just a function of the magic, but I thought I had it figured out. Altruism trumps self-indulgence. Seemed straightforward. Of course, that took my initial ideas off the table right away. I’m sorry for that, Dana. I would gladly have wished away whatever is wrong with my brain, wished for you to have a chance at motherhood. But I couldn’t risk either of those things falling victim to the jinni’s “creative interpretations.”

I don’t even want to think about what might have happened if I’d asked for peace on Earth last instead of first.

Next week I go in for another set of scans to see if Dr. Jones’s treatment is helping. It’s hard to know what to expect. I don’t feel any different, but I wasn’t exactly feeling bad before, so… I just don’t know. Just going to keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.

Entry Nine (Requiem):

Dana,

If you are reading this, then I officially have more to apologize for than I ever have. This isn’t the way I wanted you to find out about any of this, but I can only blame myself for that. I won’t ask for your forgiveness because I know I don’t deserve it. I can only hope to ask for your understanding.

If Skinner and I find what we’re looking for in Oregon, I have to pursue it to the fullest. This would be true whether or not I had something wrong with my brain (you know that), but I won’t deny there’s a part of me that hopes they can just… fix me. You and I both know what they’re capable of.

Please don’t lose yourself searching for me. This ship was hard enough to find while it’s sitting still. I promise that I will do everything in my power to come back to you. Abductees come back, Dana. Even Samantha came back, if I’d only known where to look for her. I know trust that you won’t give up on me, and I swear that, if you’ll let me, I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you.

I’m sorry. For everything.

-M

[ashleydpalmerusa]

Auditors and Fraud: Where Does Responsibility Lie in the Wake of the FDIC’s Win Against PwC?

In the waning days of 2017, a judge in Alabama found PwC was negligent in its audit of Colonial Bank. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation had sued the firm for failing to detect the fraud at the root of Colonial’s 2009 failure.

Although Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein denied other claims brought by FDIC and the bankruptcy trustee for Colonial Bank, the negligence finding could be a watershed moment for the auditing profession and its duty to design its audits to detect fraud. Firms have long held that there is an expectations gap between what auditing rules require and what the public expects. PwC plans to appeal the ruling.

Going Concern recently interviewed Brigham Young University Mary & Ellis Professor Mark Zimbelman about these developments. He teaches classes on auditing and fraud examination and focuses his research on preventing and detecting financial statement fraud. He and his son, South Carolina University Assistant Professor Aaron Zimbelman, write about these issues and more on their blog, FraudBytes.

Ed. note: This interview was conducted via email and has been edited for length and clarity.

Going Concern: How significant is the judge’s finding against PwC for the FDIC? Can you put it into context?

Professor Mark Zimbelman: From what I’ve read about the potential monetary significance, this ruling could cost PwC up to $1 billion. Unfortunately, all we can do is speculate at this time, and $1 billion is probably the upper bound, but it will likely be real money.

As for the significance in terms of legal and professional precedents, it seems the judge has made it clear that auditors must take their responsibility as it relates to fraud more seriously. I think the profession has generally considered fraud to be a secondary issue, even though auditing standards are clear that they are equally responsible for providing reasonable assurance that there are no material misstatements whether they are caused unintentionally (i.e., error) or intentionally (i.e., fraud).

GC: Why do you think PwC auditors contradicted themselves about designing audits to detect fraud?

MZ: As I talk to auditors, I’ve found there is a lot of confusion in the profession when it comes to designing audits to detect fraud. I spoke with a new hire from PwC last week who had taken my class on fraud the year before. In my class, I make it very clear that the auditing standards specify that auditors are responsible for providing reasonable assurance that there are no material misstatements due to fraud. However, he was already confused and said he had read the firm’s communication about the Colonial case and thought auditors don’t have responsibility for detecting fraud. Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed that he had forgotten what he learned the year before in my class!

I believe the confusion is probably a result of a couple of things. First, fraud gets very little attention on most audits. Hopefully, they talk about it in the required fraud brainstorming session, but then they go back to ticking and tying and don’t really look for or talk more about fraud risk. Also, even the fraud brainstorming sessions can be very ineffective. I’ve participated in some of these, and in my experience, most partners simply wanted to go through the motions of the brainstorming session to make sure they can document they followed the standards and met the requirement. Occasionally, a partner really wanted to get something out of the session. He or she wanted to figure out where a material fraud may be occurring and change the audit plan to try to get assurance about fraud. If you’re on a job where the partner is just checking the box for fraud, then you get the implicit message that fraud isn’t important. On the other hand, if you’re working with the partner who takes the brainstorming session seriously, you get a different message.

Another potential reason for the confusion may be that the standards have a history that may have caused some confusion. Several decades ago, auditors tried to avoid responsibility for fraud and even put it in their engagement letters that they weren’t responsible. The courts and even some members of Congress rejected that, and the expectation gap auditing standard on “irregularities” made it clearer that auditors had responsibility for fraud. However, even using the word “irregularity” in the standards was confusing and probably amounted to an attempt to avoid taking full responsibility for fraud. The first time fraud was clearly described in the standards, and the term “fraud” showed up, was in the 1990s with SAS No. 82. Then around the Enron/WorldCom era, SAS No. 99 clearly stated that auditors are responsible for fraud.

Another potential reason why some auditors don’t understand they are responsible for fraud is that some of the senior partners in the firms today were managers and staff when Enron and WorldCom took place. They saw what it was like to take samples of single digits of transactions and conclude that a multimillion-dollar balance with hundreds of thousands of transactions was fairly stated. At this time, auditors were aggressively cutting costs. When the rash of frauds resulted around the turn of the millennium, auditors had a wake-up call with SOX, and the PCAOB required them to get serious again. I’ve heard that the pendulum may be swinging back toward less assurance and cost-cutting. If auditors are trying to cut costs, then looking for fraud is a way to do so. Getting assurance related to fraud is definitely harder than that for errors.

It’s my opinion that a well-done audit will require a significant percentage of the effort directed at detecting fraud. This percentage is likely to be at least 20% and probably less than 50%, but from what I’ve heard, it appears that the effort now is probably in single digits in terms of percentage points. If auditors only spend, say, 20-30 hours of effort thinking about fraud on a 1,000-hour job, then it sends a message to the staff that fraud isn’t important and implies they aren’t responsible to look for it. I don’t know that this is the case on most audits, but this seems to be a reasonable approximation based on what I’ve heard from auditors who I’ve talked to. Many associate level auditors don’t think they do anything to look for fraud.

GC: You co-wrote a paper about ten years ago that found that intervening audit planning with strategic reasoning and brainstorming helps auditors modify their work in response to fraud risk. Have you seen any evidence that firms are using these tactics today?

MZ: They are required to conduct the fraud brainstorming session and, as I mentioned earlier, I’ve participated in some of these. However, I haven’t seen any evidence that the firms have made much of an effort to engage in strategic reasoning. I may be out of the loop though—at least I’d like to think some auditors are trying to think strategically.

GC: Is there anything happening today that causes you to be optimistic about auditors detecting fraud in the future?

MZ: I think blockchain technology has the potential to make it much easier to detect fraud. I am no expert in this area but, given my limited understanding, I could envision a future world where all transactions are documented in a public ledger and verification of balances, etc. becomes largely automated. In such a scenario, it would be much more difficult to create fictitious asset balances, such as accounts receivable, inventory or cash. Of course, we are still a long way away from that world, but things can change very quickly. If businesses used blockchain technology, then someone brighter than me could quickly develop a way to verify everything with a high level of assurance. It may be someone like Google who forces changes on the environment, however. I was recently told by a member of the PCAOB that leaders of the big firms are concerned that a tech company like Google could come in and disrupt the auditing world.

GC: What prevents most partners from prioritizing the consideration of fraud? Is it the business relationship? Are they not equipped with the skills to imagine how fraud could occur in different contexts? Or is it something else?

MZ: I believe there are probably a couple of things going on. First, as I mentioned earlier, there is a mistaken belief on the part of auditors, including partners, that they are not responsible for providing assurance for fraud. I’ve asked audiences of practicing auditors to answer the following true/false question: “Auditors are responsible for providing reasonable assurance that there are no material misstatements due to fraud.” About half of them answer “false” which is obviously wrong. As discussed in the Colonial case documents, some of the PWC auditors testified that they didn’t have this responsibility. That sort of confusion is a major reason why fraud isn’t a bigger priority.

I also think it’s much more difficult to figure out what to do to look for fraud. Some of it is a lack of training but also it is just a lot easier to look for errors than it is for fraud. We had Cynthia Cooper [former Vice President of Internal Audit and whistleblower at WorldCom] speak at BYU [recently] and she commented that she thinks sampling ought to be outlawed on audits because we have the ability to do so much more with technology. We can sift and sort and screen transactions like she and her team did and discover what’s in the company’s books, but it means we need to do new things and think outside the box. Sampling is a lot easier but sampling won’t usually find fraud because fraud is often in a few transactions. I personally think sampling has a place in auditing for errors and there are also some times when it can help for fraud, such as in the HealthSouth case where the client was posting over a hundred thousand transactions each quarter but all of them were under the auditor’s scope. If the auditors would have stratified their population and taken a sample of those small items, they should have caught that fraud.

Overall, I think auditors, like most humans, are resistant to change and prioritizing fraud would be a big change. Also, significant changes in audit services need to be universal or auditors who are trying to get serious about fraud will get pushback from some clients. I would like to see the PCAOB require auditors to do more for fraud. They’ve talked about it a lot but they haven’t done much yet. First on my list of changes would be to change the interviewing requirements. I would require auditors to spend significant amounts of time thinking about where fraud may be occurring using strategic reasoning and then think about who, in the lower levels of the company, might be involved in the fraud.

Cynthia Cooper mentioned that some WorldCom employees had decided that if Cynthia would ask them about the transactions that they were going to tell her what was happening. Financial statement fraud usually requires a team to carry it out and, in most cases, there are some people on the team who want to stop and would like someone to ask them about it. The two WorldCom employees who keyed over 50 journal entries had gone so far as to write their resignation letters but they never resigned because of financial pressures. If the external auditor would have talked to them and asked them some good questions such as: “Have you ever been asked to do anything unusual or that you were uncomfortable with?” or “Have you ever been asked to post any entries that seemed to lack sufficient support?” they may have pointed the auditors toward the fraud.

I personally think the skills needed to make these changes in audit procedures are not that hard to learn but someone needs to push the profession into widespread changes. The PCAOB is likely the best hope for this but the courts may beat them to it, as in the Colonial case.

GC: How well does the academic community prepare future auditors to think more critically about fraud? What, if anything, should change?

MZ: I think academia could do a better job preparing future auditors in the area of detecting fraud. The typical auditing course and textbook has very little in the way of teaching auditors how to think strategically and critically about fraud. Because the auditing standards are largely focused on detecting errors (e.g., the audit risk model and sampling are not really suitable for thinking about fraud), audit courses are also largely focused on detecting errors. I think the profession needs to change in order to get academia to change. We tend to supply what the profession wants of us. Again, significant change in the profession is most likely to take place if standard setters, such as the PCAOB or ASB, make substantive changes.

GC: Detecting fraud requires a certain mindset. What role, if any, does psychology play in the training of an auditor to be better equipped to consider the possibility and potential for fraud?

MZ: Academic models of the mindset that auditors need in order to detect fraud is best characterized in the economics literature on game theory. However, as in many areas of economics, the assumptions that economists make about human rationality are unrealistic. That’s where psychology comes in. Over the past few decades, an area of research that studies the intersection of psychology and game theory has provided some interesting insights. This research is known as behavioral game theory. The goal of this research is to help us understand how people actually behave in a strategic setting, such as that of detecting fraud. It shows that we have some pitfalls that we need to be aware of and provides some insights into how we can think more like the economists assume we think. I believe the training of auditors to help get in the proper mindset should definitely incorporate the insights that behavioral game theory research has to offer—especially as it applies to auditing.

Image: iStock/Masuti

The post Auditors and Fraud: Where Does Responsibility Lie in the Wake of the FDIC’s Win Against PwC? appeared first on Going Concern.

from Accounting News http://goingconcern.com/auditors-fraud-responsibility-fdic-pwc-colonial/

[daemonvols]

Chapter Two

Two Mowers and a Funeral

I have my morning routines as well.

    My alarm clock beeps at me starting at six in the morning. Most mornings, I bruise the snooze button until nearly seven. I dog-ear the book to the page I’d fallen asleep over and get up to have my shower and dress for the day. I’m rarely seen outside of the CPF, so I don’t have to dress up for anybody. Jeans and a clean button-down blouse would satisfy even Grandma Rose, may she rest in peace.

    Breakfast is whatever I can grab and/or cook from the fridge to the microwave in a hurry. I loathe cold cereals with milk. I have the television in the sitting room angled so that I can see it and it is on by seven-fifteen for the news. Then I check to see that neither Derek nor any of the “friendlier” ghosts have been in the house overnight to scatter papers, knock over anything not nailed down, or, worst case, leave me notes.

    With my second cup of coffee that morning in April, as for most mornings before that, I sat down at my desk in the front room/office to get in some more research on the Baumann-Farmer history before Varney and Trumbull came to make their mess.

    I am grateful that my ancestors from the last two centuries all had anal personalities. Otherwise, I would have no clue as to who I was or where my family came from or how they did business with the cantankerous members of the CPF’s Board of Directors.  It was, in fact, was a happy accident that Grandpa Dov and I were on a clearing-out mission in the upper loft of the carriage house one summer and found diaries, ledgers and piles of official papers with handwritten notes scrawled on them. As a result of surviving the dust and cobwebs and Grandma Rose’s kvetching over the mess we made in her house, I have a reasonable idea of my family tree going back to Jacob Baumann when he arrived in Upstate New York.

    His family lived in the confusion that was 19th century Austro-Hungary. They were bakers and prosperous for their time and town. Or so I surmise, because they could afford to send Jacob to rabbinical school.  I do not read enough Hebrew or Yiddish to translate all Jacob’s papers from home, but Grandpa Dov assures me that Jacob not only graduated from the school, but did so with high honors with special honors mentioned in the pilpul or disputation skills.

Still, for all the lauds and celebration of his knowledge and insight, Jacob lacked one quality of a successful rabbi: he didn’t like people. Not the living ones, anyway.

    We found no documents to explain how he came to America or how he ended up in upstate New York. However, his skills and willingness to work alone proved invaluable soon enough. In short, he talked himself and his heirs into a permanent position as the first gravedigger and caretaker at the CPF. Furthermore, he made sure his heirs to the last generation would retain the position. Grandpa Dov told me that was Jacob’s pilpul training: he could argue anyone into almost anything, which also explains his marriage to a well-to-do Syracuse banker’s daughter and their subsequent eight children.

    That morning in April, I had exhausted one more Internet site in the search for how Jacob’ immigration to the U.S., all in vain, when the office phone, a vintage 1950s dial model, rang.

    “Sayresville Cemetery,” I said into the receiver.

    “Truman Plutarch here,” wheezed a man’s voice. “I’m checking to make sure all is arranged for my mother’s funeral today.” I stifled a groan.  

The Plutarchs were the last of the moneyed families who built Sayresville. They paid for an addition to Section B in 1876 to bury their dead. Except for a few interlopers, including Derek, the Plutarchs were Section B. And this dutiful son had been calling every day since his mother’s death “to make sure all is arranged.” And I assured him every day that all would be prepared according to the detailed arrangements he had “requested” when his ninety-nine-year-old mother Eulalie went comatose in a Syracuse hospital at the beginning of March.

On the positive note, the family paid in advance.

    “It will all be done the way you requested, Mr. Plutarch,” I said.

    “You mean the way I paid for it to be done.”

    Touchy, touchy. “As you wish, Mr. Plutarch.”

    The whine then roar of the CPF’s mowers, following by the backhoe chugging came through the front windows. I raised my eyes in a silent Thank You so I could honestly say, “I need to meet with the diggers and other groundskeepers now, Mr. Plutarch. I’m sure you will be satisfied with the arrangements.”

    “Will she face the east? She told me she wanted to be buried facing east.”

    “That’s part of what I want to confirm with the diggers right away.”

    “Then I will leave you to your job.” He said the word job with all the disdain of someone who never held one.

Truman Plutarch had to be the one to hang up first.

    I had to move fast to catch both Varney and Trumbull and, with any luck, whomever the Death Services International Union had sent to dig that day. Assuming they would do their jobs as directed is like assuming anything. It makes an ass…well, you know the saying. And I had to be diplomatic when I checked up on them.

    During my grandparents’ tenure in the CPF, the gravediggers and maintenance crews in the county organized and closed shop on all cemetery and funeral services into the DSIU, a sub-union of another service union which was a sub-union of a national union. That development altered my family’s position from wearing our bodies out doing all the work to calling the union office and requesting their bodies to take over the manual labor side of the business.

This also created problems with the Board, as one might expect. Grandpa Dov fought for three years in and out of court with the CPF Board and/or the union to keep our house and pay after the unionization, and there were still sour feelings on all sides. The DSIU objected to my family’s contract, but did little about it other than voice strong opposition.

The union and sub-union were and are even less supportive when I became the caretaker and sole specified employee of the CPF, not to mention a single woman with no use for a union membership. I paid them no dues and therefore was part of “management.” So, when I needed the grass mowed and graves dug then filled in, I called the union office and they grudgingly sent the required help. The diggers varied, but for mowers I always got Varney and Trumbull.

    Yes, those two mowed the grass. But, that said, they used neither care nor bags (G-d forbid I suggest they use rakes) to catch the clippings. Each time they had finished, I had a several-hour job to go through the grounds, wiping off and re-setting headstones. The cleaning I did not mind. It got me out of the office, away from the phone, and in the fresh air.

The men were something else.

    I found Varney wiping greasy hands on an oil-stained cloth at the equipment shed next to the Potter’s Field. Varney had always reminded me of an electric eel. He was narrow and pointy-headed. He slithered rather than walks and took a perverse delight in shocking people.

    “You might want to rethink that bra,” he greeted me. “Your nipples are sticking out.”

         “Good morning to you, too. Have the diggers started on the Plutarch grave?”

    He gestured with an elbow toward the empty shed. “You see the backhoe in here?”

    Maintaining the peace (that is, biting my tongue), I left him and jogged up over Section A’s hill. Next to the original oak tree, I could see the rumbling backhoe piercing the ground in Section B. Eulalie, the queen mother of the Plutarchs who wanted to be buried facing east. I studied what was left of Section B. Placing Eulalie so she could face east would put her grave perpendicular to the rest of the generations buried there and effectively short the grounds parallel to her relatives and cut off any one else using the Plutarchs’ section for their family burials. I have no proof aside from a strong suspicion, and my dealings with Truman, that Eulalie made her request with that exclusionary result in mind.

After a meningitis outbreak in the late 19th century, my several-times great grandfather Isaac (Jacob’s grandson) suggested that the Plutarchs erect a family mausoleum. Keep every Plutarch in the family house, so to speak. The patriarch at the time, Sampson B., sneered that the CPF had already allowed one squatter into “their plot” (Derek); a mausoleum would only free the surrounding ground and encourage more inferiors to bury their dead next to the Plutarch family. One could speculate that Sampson’s true motives had to more with the family’s gilded fortune taking a serious hit in the Depressions of 1893 and 1896, thereby prohibiting such an expense, but there is no documentary proof beyond Isaac’s inferring this in his ledger.

I stood a while on the hill and studying the marble array of weeping women and sheep with sad expressions that served for Plutarch headstones. Something sordid could be interpreted from the sheep, but I prefer not to believe the century-old gossip. The Plutarchs did as they pleased, always.

I wondered if Truman go so far to assert his authority as head of the family to stop the graveside service to open his mother’s coffin and verify that she was turned the right way around to “face” east. I prayed that he didn’t. The union regs probably would not allow for a one-hundred-eighty degree turn once the coffin lay atop the hydraulic supports, and things could get ugly if he pressed the point.

    But the grave digging had commenced in the right direction. The digger for Eulalie’s grave was a new man, at least to my distance-obstructed eyes. A John Deere baseball cap rode low over his eyes, so I could only make out a square chin and lips pressed together in concentration. He had good shoulders, though, and what looked like a flat belly under his black and red union t-shirt. I liked his hands: wide palms, thick fingers and gripping hard on the levers. His jeans fit in all the right places, too. If I didn’t have to keep a close watch on Varney and Trumbull, I could have stayed under the oak tree with a smile watching until he was done.

    Trumbull had finished Section G where children who predecease their parents used to be buried. He’d finished A and C as well and would ride the mower without a muffler (union regs wouldn’t let them – or me – replace the muffler for some reason) across the skirt to Section E. Then Varney would take over and the headstones would wobble.

    To look at, Trumbull was a perfect cube on legs. From a front view, his sides bulge out about four inches. From the side, it’s about the same. He always wore sweat-stained t-shirts one size too small and low-slung old blue jeans over cowboy boots. His head was as blocky as his body and wild with long kinky brown hair and a scruff of a brown beard. I made the mistake once of asking him how he liked the job.

    “Ain’t much to shout about,” he had admitted. “The clientele are all dead, but then, they don’t talk back, neither.” He gave me a smile that had reminded me to call my dentist for my next cleaning. “But I do like the ladies passing by!” He leaned forward over the mower and the San Andreas Fault bordered in black hair opened up over his jeans’ waistband.    

“You know most of those ‘ladies’ are middle school girls,” I said. “You know, jail bait.”

    Trumbull cackled. The only thing that could tickle him more is if the Fault erupted in natural gas.

    The morning of the Plutarch funeral, I watched him trade off with Varney. Rolling my eyes at the thought of all the spirits Varney would turn loose tonight because he never missed a section’s corner headstone, I reminded myself that I had to go back to the house to get the cloths to wipe down the markers they’d already spattered with grass.    

“Cloths in the shed are union property,” Varney informed me last fall. “You ain’t union, you don’t use ‘em.” I had used petty cash to buy a supply of microfiber cloths the next day.

    I checked the time and prayed the digger would finish and leave in time for me to clean up the Plutarch stones.

He’d gone about three feet down, with three more to go in the rectangular hole. I could not wait. Section A would have to be where I started. First impressions and all.

    I managed to wipe down the stones in A, C, and H by the time I heard the backhoe grind its way up the gravel paths back to the shed. I caught a quick, closer glimpse of the lower half of the driver’s face. That strong, square jaw, firm, narrow lips clamped shut and the loveliest of Adam’s apples jutting out from his neck.

    I turned into the Potter’s Field, away from the shed. He’d have to install the hydraulics, lay the artificial turf then the folding chairs, all of which were stored in the shed. I didn’t think Varney or Trumbull would help him. Division of labor and all that. And I couldn’t be sure the driver hadn’t brought a second man along to help set up. I wouldn’t really know until I got the bill from the union. I decided I would not imitate our neighbor across the street, Mrs. Schnosburg and poke, as Grandpa Dov would say, my big “schnozz” into their business. Not yet.

    I moved onto Section G.

    Whoever that square-jawed, tight-jeaned digger was who prepared the site had finished and disappeared before noon. A good thing, because the Plutarch funeral procession was early. I watched the line of cars from the oak tree, counting twelve including the hearse and hoping they didn’t take a flat place with or without a headstone as parking space. Twelve cars, two funeral home employees, and minister and fourteen mourners.

“Some turnout for one of the area’s wealthiest women,” was my first thought. If you consider the packed cathedrals on television for the funerals of state leaders or the overflowing neighborhood churches for an elder or popular minister, you might feel badly for Eulalie Plutarch. Myself, I’ve seen cars parked along Mansfield Road for two blocks in both directions and more going east on Bayberry towards the library, bringing as many as a hundred people, for a child’s funeral. But, I suppose, the Plutarchs who mattered, and were the ones mentioned in her will, made it to the graveside for the burial.

Thank God the sun shone in a clear springtime sky. I had no doubt that Truman Plutarch would have wanted some reimbursement if it had rained.

[washingtonlaws-blog]

Delve, Episode 1: The New Hire

Epub File Here

Now a Fantasy World- your average, garden-variety, starter-kit Fantasy World and up- has to have one very vital thing to start it off right.  It needs one thing before it can fill up with heroes and spirits and mysteries and a complicated totally-unique magic system that your friends will love explaining to you in breathless detail.  It needs a failure.

Otherwise there’s nothing much to do.  For there to be ruins to explore, someone’s got to have ruined them.  Mines must go too deep so they can be properly abandoned and restocked with mysterious terror, past relationships must go sour so that secrets can boil beneath the surfaces of jilted lovers who simmer with frustrated sex appeal, a hero’s parents must die before or during their developmental stages to properly instill them with abandonment issues, and the Dark Lord must be almost vanquished but not quite so that he can come back with a literal vengeance.  

So for a Fantasy to be Fantastic, it needs to have a fantastic cock-up.

And then, the magic happens, and we discover what all these failures were, and the adventure lies therein to fix what went wrong, to stop the return of darkness for good this time, and to get everyone who’s been hiding their emotions from each other to either (A) tearily reveal them or (B) die dramatically and conveniently until the only people left have got their various love interests all good and sorted.  Then, the world continues apace, all the fantastic failures are done, and life can continue with ordinary failures.

That’s the general theme.  People learn from their mistakes, and don’t repeat the failures of history.

That’s why they call it fantasy.

And then, once the adventures are done with and the heroes have settled down and their magic swords have been turned to plowshares, we can leave a fantasy world behind.  It’s settled.  Everyone knows their place.

Unless, of course, you know, people forget, and settle into routines, and start to think the world around them is all there is, all there’s ever been, and the world outside is something that can just be ignored.  Until that world gets ignored so long it becomes something completely new.  Until rediscovery becomes such a forgotten skill, and yet so inevitable, that when it is practiced again it’s bound to result in a few mistakes.

Fantastic ones.

This story starts with an ordinary mistake, that will, of course, lead to discovering the bigger ones.

It starts with a bang.

 God, it’s a beautiful day, he thought.  Vode laid on his back and stared into the blue sky.  Blue, he thought.  So blue!  And clear!  Strange, though.  There should be clouds.

Now why did he think there should be clouds?  Also, why was he laying on his back?  He looked down his body and saw smoke rising off his boots.  Further down from his boots he saw a hole in a wall.  The hole looked very recent, and had smoking pouring out of it, too.  Smoke clouds, right.  Those were relevant, somehow.

He sat up, and saw the whole building that the wall was part of.  It was mildly on fire.  The last few seconds came back to him.

Ah, yes.  He had been blown up.

Well to be more accurate, he had been blown out, and to be more honest, he had blown himself up.  Vode patted himself down, found a few holes in his clothing but otherwise found himself intact, and wondered at what trick of physics had allowed the force of the explosion to demolish a wall while leaving him fairly whole.  But then, if he understood that, he would probably have understood enough to not have mixed those chemicals together in the first place.

Mr. Rensington stepped out of the hole in the wall, coughing and trying to wipe soot from his face with a smoldering rag.  He was a tall, ruddy man, with a curved posture that always made him loom over people like a bent tree.  He batted out small fires on the smock he wore over stained, heavy clothing.  He began to step slowly but deliberately towards Vode.

Vodelian laid back down again, trying to go still.  Predators can sense movement, and he assumed that extended to employers as well.

He had been apprenticed to the master alchemist for the better part of a week, which was a new record.  The time in stonemasonry had ended with shouts from a very angry man with a large brick on his toes, his term ended with the miners by a major accident, and even the ragpickers had decided not to pick him.  So he laid still, and tried to wait this one out.

“I’m sorry, Vode.” said Mr. Rensington without a trace of remorse in his voice, only with a trace of smoke.  “I just don’t think you’re going to work out here.  You’re a bright lad, really, but this requires someone more, well, methodical.  Consider my not charging you for the damages to be your severance pay.”

With that, the alchemist stepped back towards the smoking building, putting out a few last flickers of flame on his shoulders.  Vode stayed laying on the ground, trying to figure out if there was a point to standing up.  Maybe if he didn’t get up, his being fired would retroactively not happen.

Eventually, enough people were walking down the middle of the street that he was laying in that he decided to get up, if only to avoid having his head stepped on.

Vodelian Ragnajiit was short, dark, and sort of handsome in the nervous way some varieties of small dogs are.  He had close-cropped hair and was clean shaven, although it was getting towards the time where a five o’clock shadow was trying to show up against his dark skin.  Along with his clothing, he had all the signs of someone trying to look as clean-cut and proper as possible.  This was his interview clothing, and in fact was some of the only clothing he currently owned.

He was going to get more clothes, just as soon as any employment lasted long enough.  But this city, with its new towers springing up every month, with its fresh brick and surrounding old history, with all its opportunities open, had decided that those opportunities didn’t really apply to Vode.

His initial plan had been to join the great Ostwend Trading Company, which had its headquarters here. Now that was the life.  Go back and forth between exotic locales and watch numbers tick ever upwards on a ledger.  You also got to dress really nice.

But then Vode had actually gotten here and the Company had taken one look at his letter of recommendation and told him he’d have to wait for an opening, and with their current waiting list, they didn’t expect one for half a year.

Half a year.  With no backup plans, and the rent on his new room due, and most of his savings spent on interview clothes.

He had been a flurry of job applications after that, desperate, applying everywhere he could find.  His carefully laid plans for the future, if planning consisted of fantasizing and daydreaming, were suddenly mutable and changeable for any gig that would have him.  Vode would become anything, any walk of life, if it just meant not going back home!

Back home, where his family would be very kind, would nod at each other and welcome him back in, and then a day later would tell him they weren’t running a hotel and they heard that the neighbor’s kid had become a healer, why don’t you do that, it’s a respectable job.  Vode had heard healers had to deal with the sight of blood, so no thanks to that, and he also wanted the satisfaction of becoming something that his parents hadn’t suggested first.

Now he was wandering the streets and the day was passing by and the doors were all closing.  What was left?  Maybe he could join the town guard?  He’d have steady meals and a uniform, then, sure.  But Vode had seen the way the town guards looked at him, and he thought of all the times he’d drunkenly dealt with authority, and he wondered how they’d receive him.  He hadn’t seen too many foreigners in their ranks.

Can’t go back to the room without a promise of rent.  His mind was running in circles.  He started to look at alleyways and the eaves of buildings, thinking of where a good place to sleep might be.

Oh god, am I really thinking that? thought Vode.  Am I going to become destitute?  Homeless?  I don’t even know how to do that!  I’d probably get it all wrong and offend any other derelicts.

Then Vode stopped.  He found himself in front of a building, an old, old building, that looked like it had been passed over by the city’s shining growth.  It hunched its brick shoulders and slumped away into the background of the city, looking sullen at the new buildings and refusing to dance with them.  It had a heavy brass plaque next to its front gate that looked very official and spoke of a long history, but what Vode noticed was a cheap cardboard sign that read:  “HELP WANTED.”

He walked in without another moment’s thought.  He did not bother reading the words on the plaque, which quietly but definitively told the world that this was The Delver’s Guild, est. long ago, To Bring Light Where It Is Needed.

 The foyer Vode found himself standing in looked larger than it needed to be.  Walls of dark smoky wood stretched up to a vaulted ceiling with thick rafters.  There was a large fireplace set in one wall, full of ashy cobwebs.  There were several tables sized for variously sized crowds, but only one table in a corner was occupied by two old men who were either taking no notice of Vode or were quite possibly asleep.  There were some things hanging on the walls, shields, old posters, the head of a beast or two, all covered in dust.  It was a wasteland.

There was also a desk against the far wall with a clerk sitting at it.  She had her feet up and was reading a book.  A door behind her read OFFICIAL BUSINESS ONLY.

Vode walked right up to the desk and began to speak.

“Hello, I’m Vodelian Ragnajiit, and whatever it is, I can do it.  If I don’t know how to do it, I’ll start anyway and I’ll have learned it by the time I’m done.  I’m a hard worker, I work smarter, and I think my greatest flaw is a terror of wasps, but I will figure out how to get over it if you need me to remove a wasp’s nest.  I’m great at sales, purchasing, customer service, I can lift fifty pounds regularly, I can stand eight hours a day or eight hours a night, and I’m a motivated persevering initiative-taking extroverted people-oriented high-energy team-member with very nearly a food handler’s permit.”

He sat down.  He opened his mouth.  He realized didn’t have something else to say.

The clerk looked at him out of the corner of her eye.  She was pale, with brown hair tied back to control a riot of split ends.

“Alright.” she said.  “Well, we’ll consider your application, and then call you in for a followup interview.”

Vode’s face fell.  “Oh.  Right.  How long will that be?”

“Well.” she said. “Stand up.”

Vode stood up.

“Sit down.”

Vode sat down.

“Well Mr. Ragnajiit,” she said, and Vode was astounded she got his name right on the first try.  “We’ve looked over your application and would love to interview you.  Is now a good time?”

Vode blinked.  “Yes.” he said.

She opened up a drawer in the desk and pulled out a sheaf of dog-eared papers.

“Alright then.  Previous places of employment?”

Vode thought over the last few days.  “Alchemist, mason, miner, janitor, beekeeper-” he winced at that thought- “-carter, uh, barrel… making… person- what do you call that one?”

“A cooper, I think.” she said.

“Cooper, right.   Some other stuff.”

“I see.” she said.  She shuffled the papers, not looking at them.

“How fast can you run?”

Vode thought about this for a moment, and curled slightly in on himself as he tried to work out an answer that looked good. “Fairly… fast enough, I suppose?”

“That works.” she nodded.  “Does your family have any history of mental illness or plans to acquire one?”

“No and- ah, no.”

“Have you ever been shot in the face?”

Vode struggled for a moment, trying to decide if he should ask her to repeat that question.  Surely he misheard her.  But he didn’t want to appear inattentive.

“N-no.” he slowly said.

She glanced at the papers in front of her and muttered something that sounded like “Minimal Experience.”

“Alright.” she said.  “I’ll just go see the boss and I’ll be right back.”

She left the room through an old door, and Vode managed to count to just past ten before she came back out again.

“Well, we’ve considered your application very carefully and we’d like to welcome you to the company.  You can sleep above the kitchen, breakfast is in the morning as long as you help with the dishes, now come with me so you can meet the boss.”

“Oh.  Yes!  Wonderful.  Thank you very much, you won’t regret it.”  Vode felt the words coming out of him automatically, as his brain had a fit trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.  He stood up and began to follow the clerk, but managed to ask:  “Out of, well, curiosity, and just to help me get all ready and able, bring me up to speed and all that, uh... what company have I just joined?”

She smiled a tired smile.  “Welcome to the Delvers.”

 The offices of the Delver’s Guild were mostly quiet and sparsely populated.  The desks were barely separated by thin wooden partitions, which created a sense of division but still left everyone visible to everyone.  There was a sense that the room was built for busier times, to allow rushing bodies to bustle and push past each other, but now it resembled a theater after the audience has gone home and nothing’s been cleaned up yet.  There was an older woman knitting at one desk and looking quite at home, and a desk labelled CARTOGRAPHY DEPARTMENT had an ancient OUT sign on it with the requisite spiderweb hanging from its side*.  There were signs of life in the mailroom, which had been rented out as something of a proxy PO box by a distributor of mail-order catalogues and also occasionally hosted illicit dice games.

*In addition to the ability to sense vibrations, spiders also catch prey with a highly-focused sense of comedic timing.  If they did not have webs, they would have banana peels.  This also informs their mating habits.

A desk labelled HUMAN RESOURCES was occupied.

Nilnacular Torkwald had never been shot in the face.  He had a scar along his cheek that suggested otherwise, but the shot had only grazed along his face and never gotten directly in it.  A consummate opportunist, his aim in life was for District Manager, but the District Manager had ducked at the last minute and he'd hit a mailroom clerk instead.

He did not like his job.  Oh, he liked the title, but it required him to deal with people, and he considered people to be the least necessary part of a society.  Human Resources became a lot less exciting when you discovered it did not involve mining or chopping down anybody, and he’d disconsolately had to leave the pickaxe he’d bought at home.

Nil was lean, mean, and blonde.  He sat at his desk, which was piled high with papers to conceal a large number of small weapons, and he hunched over a random, disordered series of procurement reports like a predatory animal.  His eyes scanned over them without reading anything, while trying to hide his constant watchful glances at the District Manager's desk.

The front-desk clerk, what’s her name, Recca, she’d just come in and talked to the Manager.  Nil’s senses were on immediate alert.  Something was actually happening!  Things had been very dull as of late, which had been all feeding into Nil’s master plan to outlast everyone else, take a controlling share of the company, and mold it into his vision.  He wasn’t sure what that vision was yet, but with all the work he’d put into getting to it, he knew it was going to be a good one.

Then a young, dark man came walking in, looked fairly well dressed (if a bit rumpled), and Nil suddenly realized:  A new hire.

He gripped his desk, grabbed a random piece of paperwork, and tried to look like he was reading it as he watched.

 District Manager Dzerdzik Halffast had been shot in the face several times, as his eyepatch suggested.  However the eyepatch was due to an unrelated sports accident.  His chipped tooth, meanwhile, did in fact owe itself to being shot in the face:  He'd grinned at just the right moment and the arrow had been so discomfited by his disarming smile that it had decided "screw this", taken a bit of his incisor, and headed for the hills.

But now he was in management, and he hardly ever got shot in the face any more.

He regarded the new recruit, who was looking a bit nervous.  Dzerdzik gave a big gap-toothed grin, which only seemed to make the recruit more nervous.

“Well now, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Vodelian.” he said.  “Or Vode, if you don’t mind.”

Vode shook his head.

“And y’can call me Dzerd.”

“Um, thank you, mister, um, De-Zerd.”

“Ah, you’ll get the hang of it.” said the manager.  “I’d just like to first of all welcome you to the Delvers.  It’s been awhile since we had some new blood.  Or hell, any blood!”  He chuckled to himself.

“Really,” he continued.  “We could use someone to run some of our fresher errands.  I mean, some of the older staff- well, they’re not really get-up-and-go these days.  And the last I heard from our Senior Field Agent- Recca, just when did we last hear from Drawm?”

“The winter before last, sir.” said the clerk, who had lingered to assist the orientation.

Halffast sighed.  “I figure he’s lost again.  Or maybe he’s finally dead, for real this time.”

“You- you mentioned errands.” said Vode.  He hated to admit it, but he was a little intimidated.  The man in front of him had the build of a canvas sack full of tennis balls, and was at least a head shorter than Vode, but there was something big and tough and confident about him.  He wasn’t much to look at, but on the canvas of the world he sat like a stain, unsightly but ready to put up a fight before it’s gone.

“Just-” Vode gathered himself.  “I think I may be a little unclear on things, but just what do you do here?”

Halffast eyed Vode, and his grin was gone.  He didn’t look displeased or offended by the question.  He was just quiet, for a moment, and then he sighed and leaned back in his chair.  It was the sigh of someone taking a brief rest from a long, long trek.

“Isn’t that a shame?” he said.  “You have to ask.  There was a time when everyone knew what we did.  This city is here because of us!”  He gestured around him, letting the office surroundings stand in for the world at large.  “The Delvers!  We delved.  Into dark places, strange places, alien places, all the places everyone else wanted to go but needed someone else to go first.  Ah!  The things we found, that made kings!  The secrets we learned, that burned old tyrannies to the ground!  With just your wits, a fire, and maybe a sharp object or two you’d go where everyone else feared to tread, see if it was a place worth being, drive out the dangers that lurked there, solve the riddles left as a last puzzling legacy by forgotten peoples, find the forgotten lores of magic, and maybe even get rich.”

He’s going to say those were the days, realized Vode.

“Those were the days.” said Halffast.  “And it was alright, you know?  People got hurt, maybe reading the wrong inscription or pulling the wrong lever gave us the odd earthquake or pillar of fire or two, but overall it was profitable, and it made a difference.  But I guess- well, I guess we ran out of secret places.  Or at least ones worth finding.  Makes sense.  Eventually all the treasure gets found, all the caverns get mapped, all the lost royalty gets saved.  It was all bound to run out.”

Then he just sat there silently, looking into the distance with his teeth showing.

“So now…” Vode prompted.

“Oh, we’re sort of odd-jobbers now.”  Halffast tapped his thick fingers on the desk.  “The set-up we’ve got left is pretty ideal on keeping tabs on lotsa places.  So we run errands, we do surveys, we go get news and reports from places and get paid for the information.  A lot of stuff for governments and… trading companies.”  His voice seemed to slow on that last phrase.  He looked like he didn’t like the taste of it.

“Anyway.” He pointed at Vode.  “I’m sure Recca told you about the benefits.  It’s getting late, your spare place to sleep is all ready, in the morning you can get your first assignment from Nil Torkwald, that fellow over there with the scar who’s been watching us this whole time.”

There was the sound of a panicked flurry of papers from the direction of the Human Resources desk.

“You didn’t ask me if I already had a place to sleep.” said Vode.

“No, I didn’t.”  There was a knowing look.

 Vode settled into a worn cot under old blankets.  There was a wooden footlocker at the end of it, a small lantern next to it, and otherwise the room was fairly unadorned.  It was at least warm from the kitchen below it, and it was a sight better than trying to deal with the rent on his last place.  Here, now, he let himself settle back, his nerves too shot to think about what he was going to do in the morning.

Adventurers, huh, he thought as his brain tried to wind down.  What a strange old curiosity to find.  Well, it would keep him fed for awhile, until he could get a Real Job.  Yes, he’d sleep here for a bit, build up a presence that could get put on a resume, and then an opening in the Trading Companies would surely arrive and he would be off to the world.

He slept.  The world outside waited.

Next:  A Rapture of Raptors