An hour later found Kreet and Mr. Feltix back at the big desk, as the Archivist was poring over some sort of ledgers and cross-referencing them with another thick book which she gathered was an inventory of building works from the palace. It was menial, tedious work and they had brought back all the ledgers from twenty-five to thirty-five years ago.

Kreet had long ago lost any interest, but the old gnome had gone through three of the ten years' worth of entries so far and showed no signs of stopping. In fact, Kreet was deeply impressed by his diligence. He might be a little strange, but he was clearly the right man for the job.

Then she heard an odd sound. A rhythmic squeal. At first she looked up with some real concern, wondering if perhaps there might be rats down here - but Mr. Feltix didn't look concerned. However, in a moment she heard the voices of Kallid and Miss Tribi speaking in normal tones, and the repeated noise was much too regular to be coming from any creature.

She hopped down and padded towards the sound where she saw Miss Tribi pushing a wheelbarrow full of scrolls while Kallid was carrying some books.

"...not really," Miss Tribi was saying. "We call them 'rolls'. They're not quite the same as actual scrolls which will have two distinct rods and are generally short and meant to be read aloud. Rolls like these are... Oh! Hi Kreet!"

"Hi Miss Tribi, find anything? What's all this?" Kreet said, trying her best to be cordial, but knowing full well her eye color would be giving her away if the woman knew how to read her. Kallid certainly did.

"Royal decrees. We've got five years' worth here!" Kallid said, and Kreet was happy to know he either hadn't noticed her emotional state, or was politic enough to ignore it.

"Just the more trivial decrees, mind you," MIss Tribi amended. "They're written on these rolls. Not deemed significant enough to be bound into a book. But they're not indexed. It will take days to look through them. Oh! What's Mr. Feltix doing?"

"I'm not sure I fully understand myself," Kreet said, though she found herself noticing every crease and fold in both of their clothes. And hated herself for it. "Something about cross-referencing purchase entries with building completion notices. The building completion notices are only for those done by the masons, but the purchase entries in the ledgers aren't separated by type so he has to look through each of them one-by-one. Ten years' worth!"

Kallid looked at the stack of ledgers.

"He's already gone through about three years' worth though!" Kreet added, hopefully at Kallid's look.

"Oh yes, Mr. Feltix is nothing if not thorough," Miss Tribi said as she parked the wheelbarrow beside the wall.

"So now what do we do?" Kreet asked, fingering the hundreds of rolls.

"Well, if you have the patience and ability to stay as keen-eyed as Mr. Feltix, we could start going through these rolls."

"And if not?"

"We wait for him to either finish, or find something. To be honest, it's most of my job down here."

**********

An hour or more passed while Kreet, Kallid and Miss Tribi whiled away the time by talking about Kreet's time in the monastery or Kallid's time in the Underdark. Soon Kreet realized she had forgotten about her worries and silly jealousies. Mostly.

The archivist had hopped off his chair once, left to go up the circling stairs, then came back and resumed his work.

"Call of nature," Miss Tribi explained. "In fact, why don't we go up and stretch our legs too?"

They did so. Kreet and Miss Tribi went to the female lavatory while Kallid crossed to the other side of the Narthex to the male lavatory.

"He's a delight!" Miss Tribi was saying in the privacy of the closed room. "Oh, I'm over all that now. I'm afraid at first I just saw him as... well... a male you know? Thank you so much for letting me spend a little time with him. I feel like a fool now, objectifying him like that."

Kreet thought it a little odd how most females seemed to have no compunction against talking while doing natures' business, and yet from what she'd gathered from Kallid, males seemed to stay quiet and stoically focused on the business at hand.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Well, give yourself some credit, Miss Tribi. You hadn't much experience."

"True. But... it's like he's a normal person!"

"He is!"

"I know. I read far too much into my romance books. In them they're all either passionate lovers' whose sole desire is to take us to bed, or they're crude animals that want to skip the bed entirely! But he's just... normal!"

Kreet wasn't sure what to say to that, so she just shrugged as she sorted out her robe. Miss Tribi held the door for her again. Kreet wondered if she did that because she was a guest, or due to her condition, but Kallid was at the secret door and urging them on.

"Come on! He's found something!"

"Ah!" Mr. Feltix said when they'd re-entered the archives. "Do you have some sort of a system of organization of these rolls, Miss Tribi?"

"Of course I do! Do you think I've learned nothing working with you all these years? Left to right, sorted by age. The books are sorted bottom-to-top by age as well. They contain annotated details on each decree. I've got all of them from twenty-five to thirty years ago. We can go back for more if needed of course."

"Won't be necessary. Early summer 29 years ago. Masonry purchase. Water-proof grout. Not normal grout like the other palace building projects - completely waterproof. There was a reflecting pool installed later that year, but it checked out. This does not. There are no specifics given, but it clearly is designated as 'sewer project'."

Miss Tribi was already at work, sorting through the rolls until she came across one near the bottom of the pile still loaded into the wheelbarrow. She pulled it out and untied the binding string.

But Kreet was already looking at Kallid. "It was done by the King. Maybe we shouldn't..."

However Mr. Feltix shook his head. "Now now, female kobold #1. You jump to conclusions. Just because it was ordered by the palace doesn't necessarily mean the King himself was involved. Many royal decrees are made by underlings. The Annotations will detail it. And even if it were approved directly by the King, this would have been our beloved King's father - may he rest in peace."

"You say early summer," Miss Tribi said from the floor while she began to scan through the roll. "Can you be more precise?"

"The order was placed on the second day of the third tenday of Flamerule. The decree would have preceded that by a tenday most likely."

As Miss Tribi continued to read through the roll, Mr. Feltix pulled a book from the stack that Kallid had brought and held the spine up to the fading light from the high stained-glass window.

"Ah, yes. This is it. The Annotations for Flamerule of that year. Now if you can provide the decree identifier, Miss Tribi."

"I'm trying, Mr. Feltix!"

"Do you need more light, Miss Tribi?"

"I need no light, Mr. Feltix," came the reply without the assistant even looking up from the roll.

Kreet realized this scene was likely repeated routinely between the two. But Mr. Feltix pointed to some unlit candles on sconces around the walls and asked if Kreet and Kallid might light them, while indicating a couple of extensible candle-lighters against the wall. Kreet showed Kallid how they worked and Kallid was working on the last candle when Miss Tribi announced the decree identifier.

"127.1 - Sewer building project. Interesting! That's all it says. Nothing about what it's for. Usually there's some detail even without the annotations."

But Mr. Feltix was already back at the table with the book of annotations in hand, flipping pages.

"Here it is. Decree 127.1. See there? Not signed directly by the King... authorized by... Oh! Authorized by Bishop Harlie! Now what on earth would Bishop Harlie have had to do with the sewers?"

"Who's Bishop Harlie?"

"Oh," Miss Tribi answered, rolling up the roll again while Mr. Feltix continued to scan his book. "She was our previous Bishop, before Bishop Wynda."

"Yes! This is unique!" Mr. Feltix was saying before she'd finished. "The annotation is quite cryptic. Unidentified sewer-work. Location undisclosed. This is very unusual indeed! The annotations are normally quite explicit on the type and location of projects like this. This has been intentionally made obscure!"

"And I assume Bishop Harlie took the secret of why to her grave," Kreet said as Mr. Feltix closed up the book, having nothing left to be gleaned from it.

"That would be an odd thing to do," Mr. Feltix said as he set the book back on top of the other annotation books. "Graves aren't pre-assigned here female kobold #1. How would she know which one to put it in?"

"She's very much alive, Kreet," Miss Tribi explained. "She lives in the Rectory with Bishop Wynda and the other clergy. She's getting on now. Doesn't hear very well. But you'd better talk about this with Bishop Wynda first. I don't know why this has been made secret, but someone obviously didn't want it to become public knowledge. Not all knowledge is beneficial, despite what Mr. Feltix would tell you."

"It's all beneficial to someone, Miss Tribi! Now let's put this all away. It's getting late and no job is done till the books are back in place!"

Kreet helped Mr. Feltix with his books again, while Kallid headed back down unknown aisles with Miss Tribi. Kreet watched them leave, chatting away about secret conspiracies of the past. She wasn't too worried about Kallid getting into any mischief with the buxom Miss Tribi any longer. But the thought still refused to die altogether.

"Female kobold #1?" Mr. Feltix said, breaking her out of her reverie. "Are you coming? You'll never find it on your own."

"Ah, sorry. Yes. Distracted."

This time she refused to glance down the perpendicular aisle to check on her husband. Until she actually got there. She found she was unable not to look, but there was no one in sight this time anyway. She chastised herself internally for her lack of trust again, knowing now that she would never be completely free of suspicion. It felt very wrong, but she simply could not wring it from her mind. She would have to learn to accept her own faults like this, and try her best to overcome them. But it did lower her self-image a little. She'd always thought she would be above such feelings. No, she wasn't a saint after all.