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The Necromancer's End + The Enchanter's Rise
Chapter 9. The Blade and The Bureaucrat

Chapter 9. The Blade and The Bureaucrat

Chapter 9. The Blade and The Bureaucrat

Packing and moving camp in the remaining daylight brought them to the foothills of the mountain. Jeremiah’s entire body begged to rest, especially because Christopher the donkey had disappeared during their exploration of the tomb, leaving them to carry all of their remaining gear and supplies themselves. 

Finally, Allison deemed their distance from the tomb to be sufficient. Something akin to a camp was set up, armor was stripped, and the meager parcels of remaining food were doled out. The mountain still loomed, peeking at them over the trees, like it might be informing the golem of where they were headed. Jeremiah hurried to bed before Allison could change her mind.

In the small hours of the morning, a stabbing pain in Jeremiah’s back wrenched him awake. He leapt from his sleeping roll and realized the pain was within his own body—the treacherous muscles of his back were seizing up, bringing a gasp of pain to his lips. His legs felt like lead but he didn’t want to wake anyone else, so he staggered beyond the warm ring of light cast by the embers of their fire towards the dark woods just beyond. There, he began to stretch and knead his back, trying to soothe the pain away.

“Dangerous to wander away from camp.” Bruno’s voice drifted from somewhere above him.

“Back spasm,” Jeremiah strained to say. There was a soft crush of vegetation behind him, and he was suddenly struck between the shoulder blades. The blow hurt, but the spasms instantly stopped. “Thanks,” he said, rolling his shoulders. 

The sound of striking flint, and their little corner of darkness bloomed with lamp light. Jeremiah could finally see Bruno, dressed in his black leathers.

“On watch?” Jeremiah asked.

“Yeah. Have a seat.” Bruno sat beneath a tree and patted the moss invitingly. He took off his headcover and tossed it a dozen feet away. The reinforced leather hidden inside the wrap kept it open like a bowl where it landed.

“What are the odds that golem continues to chase us?” asked Bruno, as Jeremiah settled beside him.

Jeremiah thought it over. “The golem has got one job, and it’ll continue until it’s done. But unless the stories about a troll’s regeneration are exaggerated…”

“They’re gonna be stuck there for a good while,” finished Bruno. “The troll was making progress, though. It might take a long time, but eventually it will win.” He began gathering acorns and small stones, making a small pile between them. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“What’s up?” Jeremiah asked.

Bruno selected an acorn off the pile and tossed it towards the headwrap. It dropped inside the hat with a satisfying thwap . “Was wondering if you’ve thought about what you’re going to do.”

“Going to do?” asked Jeremiah. He threw an acorn too. It bounced off the edge of the headwrap and disappeared into the dark.

“What’s your plan for the future?” asked Bruno. “Life-saving spells in a dungeon aside—thanks, by the way—you’re not a necromancer anymore. You got this enchanting job, but you don’t seem to like it. You don’t seem to be leaning toward anything else, and it’s been a year since you were cleared of charges.”

“I don’t know, I guess I’m doing it day by day.” Jeremiah felt suddenly angry. “Is there some kind of time limit?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” said Bruno, “if you keep at this enchanting thing and start giving us magic equipment I’ll make your damn bed every morning. But it sounds like it sucks, and I’d rather you not be miserable.” Bruno hit the mark with his next throw too. “Is this enchanting something you want to keep doing?”

“Not sure,” said Jeremiah. He hurled a stone far past the hat. Bruno’s questions were beginning to frustrate him. Was he expected to have this all worked out? It had been barely a year since he escaped a death sentence and saved the city from certain ruin. He felt he had earned a little leeway. “What about you? You had said adventuring is just what you do, or some aloof bullshit. But then I learn you’re some kind of crime boss, or underworld manager, or something. That’s an awful lot of responsibility for just some adventurer.”

Bruno sighed. “I don’t know either.” His threw an acorn that bounced off the rim of the headwrap.

That wasn’t what Jeremiah was expecting. He decided to stay quiet, giving Bruno time to think. 

Bruno started again, his voice guarded. “I’ve spent a lot of the last year working with Delilah, you know? She has me deliver things, find people that are ducking her. Brings me along to lurk just behind her, make her seem dangerous.” Another acorn hit the edge of the hat and disappeared into the dark.

“I watch her write a letter,” Bruno continued. “Maybe two pages, tops. She sends it off, and a school gets built in the slums. The kingdom provides money to fix a flophouse and pay a schoolteacher. Now twenty five kids are learning to read and do numbers. She writes another letter, and now they get breakfast and lunch every day, too.” 

Bruno stood and began pacing. “I’ve done some serious shit, Jay! I’ve murdered, stolen, extorted, blackmailed—you name it, I’ve done it. I did it to create some semblance of peace and safety for people who have damn all to their names.” Bruno snatched up a fistful of stones and flung them into the dark. “But I have never made a school, from nothing, where a bunch of kids get the chance to actually escape the hell they live in!”

Jeremiah held very still and stayed very quiet. He’d never seen Bruno like this before, on the verge of losing control.

“But Delilah,” Bruno pointed toward the glow of their fire pit, “she just writes a letter, says she’s ‘asking for Grant,’ and money just appears! Who the hell is Grant?” Bruno whipped a sword from his belt and hurled it into a tree. Then he dropped back beside Jeremiah like nothing had happened. “Took her all of ten minutes.”

Jeremiah waited, but Bruno seemed to have spent all his energy. “Fucking letters, man,” was all he could think to say.

“Right?” said Bruno. He sighed and glanced at the sword, still quivering in the tree trunk. “I offered to stab bureaucracy for her, but she won’t tell me where it lives.”

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Jeremiah snorted at the joke. “If it makes you feel any better, no amount of letter writing can do what you do.”

“Yeah, but no amount of what I do can accomplish what she does,” said Bruno.

“No easy answers for either of us,” said Jeremiah. He put a reassuring hand on Bruno’s shoulder.

Bruno patted Jeremiah’s hand. “Yeah, man. Thanks.”

Jeremiah didn’t respond, just threw another acorn towards Bruno’s hat. To his surprise, it landed neatly inside. “I’m going back to bed. You need anything?”

“Take the rest of my shift?” asked Bruno.

“I’m still not allowed to take watch, remember?”

“I…Have you not been doing watch shifts? I thought you were between Allison and Delilah!”

“Nope, you yourself forbid me from—”

“That was forever ago, I didn’t even know you!”

“—from taking watches! If you want to change that, you can put it to a vote in the morning. But rules are rules, goodnight!”

The motion to repeal the ban on Jeremiah taking watch was introduced early the next morning, and passed with rapid, unanimous, and furious consent.

—--------

The walk back to civilization was slow. As Christopher had been carrying most of their supplies, their progress was hampered not only by exhaustion but by the need to procure food and water as they traveled. They arrived back at their home in Dramir two weeks later, only partially inured to the smell.

"Everyone check yourself for ticks, please," said Delilah, "and do not sit—I said, do NOT sit on my couch, Bruno! Toss all clothes and armor out the back door. I'm not living with this stink for the rest of my life.” She gathered up an armful of mail that had piled up inside her door.

"It's in my hair, I can feel it," said Allison.

"Yes, we're all getting baths. I'll start heating the water now. Throw on fresh clothes and sit on the floor," said Delilah. She pumped a pail of water and set it on the hearth. Banging flint and steel over tinder and kindle, Delilah quietly hissed in frustration as her exhausted hands fumbled with the tools. Jeremiah watched sympathetically. Nothing took longer than getting a fire started when you were exhausted and dying to be warm.

"Can we talk about our take?" said Jeremiah. The electrum coins had been divided between them for transport, and now sat together on the table along with the few loose gemstones, the crown, and the magic bag.

Bruno pulled out a sampling of coins from the bag. He began tossing them to himself, almost juggling them. "Rough estimate of eighty-twenty, gold-to-hopefully, silver.”

“You can tell that just by feeling them?” asked Jeremiah.

“I’ve handled a lot of counterfeits,” said Bruno. “You, on the other hand, are no counterfeit.” He held up the crown, its pink sapphires glinting.

“Sorry Bruno, but that’s getting returned,” said Delilah. She was sorting through mail and adding the occasional letter to the infant flame in the tinder.

The coins on the table jumped as Bruno dropped his head onto the wood. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Delilah. The gemstones alone could—”

“Stop thinking in coins,” said Delilah. “Networks and favors, that’s where the real money is. Ouch.” She had reconsidered and snatched a letter back from the flames.

“I disagree,” Bruno muttered into the table.

“We’ll need to get the loose gems appraised and sold,” said Allison. “The real question is this magic word, or whatever it is. You made it sound really important, Jay, exactly how valuable are we talking?”

“Oh! No promises or anything, but depending on what the word is, and assuming it’s NOT a word that’s already known…well, pretty priceless honestly,” said Jeremiah. Now that they were home, his excitement was returning. This kind of discovery was a once in a generation event. He gingerly extracted an etching of the rune from its reinforced pocket and stared at it.

“Priceless doesn’t help us,” said Bruno. “How much gold can we get for it?”

“I really don’t know,” said Jeremiah, “there’s even something to be said for keeping it a secret. Delilah, alchemists keep some stuff secret right? Formulas and things?”

Delilah didn’t respond, she was closely reading a letter with a growing look of concern.

“Delilah?”

“…Yeah. Some stuff is a secret, others we share. You share your good stuff for the prestige, you keep your best stuff a secret so no one steals it. Then they might share it and steal your prestige,” said Delilah, still reading.

“Huh? But wouldn’t…uh, nevermind. Anyway, we could theoretically sell the rune to another mage. Certainly name our price—whatever they can afford, anyways. Might take time though, we’d need to find mages who could make it worth our while,” said Jeremiah. His eyes flicked to the windows and he rolled up the page again.

Bruno grinned. “Could easily rook a bunch at once, make em all think they’re getting an exclusive.”

“We could! But then there’d be a lot of mages angry at us, which I assume we don’t want,” said Jeremiah.

“Yeah, I don’t want that,” Allison said. She set her page onto the table. She and Jeremiah helped Bruno stack the coins into small towers, ceding conversation to the clinks of metal clattering over metal. They finished quickly, which Jeremiah thought boded poorly.

Bruno took a count. “Alright, so you two did stacks of ten, rookie mistake, and I did stacks of five, so looks like we’ve got about…two hundred and forty five coins. Assuming my ratios are correct, that makes for…one hundred and ninety six gold and forty nine silver. Not bad.”

Jeremiah’s head swam with a mild wave of dizziness. He still wasn’t used to hearing about sums of money like that.

“Minus materials for me to dissolve the coins in order to separate the metals, minus cost for having them recast and certified by a licensed goldsmith,” said Delilah. Her scowl at the mail had only deepened.

Bruno deflated. “Yeah, minus those things.”

Allison pushed the coins and gemstones into a single pile. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We can get the gems appraised while Jeremiah works on translating the rune. But first, some R and R. Two days of bed rest and light activity for everyone.” She carefully toted the pile of loot to their hidden floor safe and locked it away. 

Delilah sighed at her papers. “Al, why don’t you go first on the bath? I need to deal with some of this.”

Jeremiah and Allison shared a look of concern. “Delilah, is this really something you need to do right now?” asked Allison. 

Delilah didn’t respond, just carried an armful of documents into her room and closed the door.