An Error in the Ledgers
Chapter 1
In a dimpled valley between green hills was tucked a pretty little town. The town was rather well cared for as towns go. The streets were well paved with the large cream colored stones found around the brook that had imparted the town with the accurate if not terribly imaginative name, Brooksong. The houses were neatly thatched with goldenrod straw and the buildings were, for the most part, promptly repaired when they became frayed.
The inhabitants of Brooksong were rather proud of their kept and cleaned town. They had made their hedges straight and made sure to learn the names and habits of all of their neighbors. It was far enough from any coast to keep vagabonds from accumulating and an unyielding habit of cold shouldering establishments of ill repute kept the town free of too frequent misadventure.
Inside this town lived a very old man, Rheffus Eleanor, although he hadn't been called Rheffus since his wife had passed in the decade prior, though even she had not called him that often, preferring the more descriptive, Fussy. He was only Eleanor to anybody else. This old man, who stooped when he walked and could never quite shake the tremor from his hands nor entirely stop coughing, owned a small store in what had once been on Brooksong's main street.
It wasn't any longer, the town being tucked against a hill they had expanded only to the south. The main thoroughfare had following, and the bustling of shoppers and people going about regular business usually missed Eleanor's little store. The store itself didn't have a name. If Eleanor were to be asked, he would wonder patronizingly why the only store of its kind in a little town would need a name.
Although Eleanor perhaps had quieter reasons than that to pull down the beautifully painted sign from the front of his shop. Though to be more accurate, to pay good strong boys to pull the sign down. He was far too old to do any sort of destruction of the physical kind. But he was right about it being the only one of its kind. Eleanor's unnamed little store sold books.
Now, books were generally expensive in this sort of town and Brooksong was not an exception. And Eleanor did not stock the cheap serial sort of thing people might gamble about on the street. He was quick to tell an inquirer that this sort of rag was trite, and not worth the coppers it cost. More than that, Eleanor was a smart little man and knew if he stocked those cheap and popular little serials people would be jostling in and out of his store all the time. Perhaps even having their eye caught on a more solid and expensive books they had no idea they were interested in. Perhaps even walking out with their pockets lighter and their arms full of new tomes. Eleanor could imagine nothing worse.
The shelves of his store were his life work. He sold a copy occasionally when he had little coin left for the meager rations he gnawed at with aging teeth and once a year he sold something good to buy a particularly colorful bouquet of flowers. But mostly he glowered until people left, when any came at all. He liked sitting in his book shop and looking at the mostly full shelves. He liked drinking a strong cup of tea and smelling the pages. And he thought that if it were just him and just in the evening of his life, he might just sit in his shop and drink his tea and smell his books as he liked.
Eleanor did, however, have a single someone whom he would count as a friend, being the last one left after he had so foolishly outlived everyone of his own age. She, of course, had not been a friend of his though his many years, she was a new social acquisition. She had not grown up in town, as anyone with more than a bit of fluff between their ears might guess, looking at her pointed ears and light step. But Eleanor liked her just the same.
He had not thought that he would, when she moved her few belongings into the small room across the street from his shop. Most elves he had known were haughty and vain, or at least that is what Eleanor saw in them. But she liked his books. He let her borrow them and she read them and then, having brought him a cupcake or muffin or croissant, would drink tea with him and tell him thoughts about his books that had never condensed for him in all his readings of them.
The little elf, he didn't know if she was just small for humans or small for her kind as well, worked as an assistant at a very cute bakery that was doing very well on the main street. He had only been inside her bakery once. He didn't much mind that she was not the owner, he would go right on calling it her bakery. It was called Cupcake, and was decorated in all manner of pastel colors and floral arrangements.
She worked mostly in an undirtied apron of pretty colors bringing multicolored cupcakes to the establishment's patrons, rather than in the back making any sort of pastry. She wasn't especially good at making pastries but she was quite good as serenely smiling at patrons and remembering the names and preferences of regulars. Extraordinarily good, really. A person needed only to go in once and she would remember any detail that person were to drop. She would recall if they didn't much care for nuts, or had a particular fondness for apple tarts, or perhaps if a person quite liked the seat by the door that got the most sun, or the little table tucked in the corner that was never jostled.
Most days, when she finished her work, Eleanor would see her walking back up the street toward her little room and he'd put a mark in the book he was working on and put on a kettle. Just as the kettle would start to sing, she would come through his door, the bell above it tinkling as she entered. She usually brought him something to eat, although it could never properly be called dinner.
She was not pretty enough and he was not young enough, for her visits to garner any attention from the neighbors. This suited the both of them, who kept each other awake into the small hours discussing whatever book he had allowed her to go home with a few days before.
It was the prospect of this sort of evening that Eleanor was rather looking forward too, although it was many hours away. Soon he would find something for lunch then busy himself in a book to pass the time before evening.
Eleanor did not know, for how could he, that he would not be seeing the bookish little elf that evening, nor any other evening again.
But just then, in the first hours of her shift, as unawares of the change in her future as poor Eleanor, the small elf affixed a name plate saying 'Tega' to her blouse and tied a pale pink apron around her waist.
The patrons of Cupcake were quite fond of little Tega, despite their reluctance to really like any elf. She was quite a bit more plain that the other elves that had come across the town. She didn't possess the other worldliness of most elves, which was perhaps her lack of that ethereal beauty common to her race. Few, especially among humans, would call her unbecoming, but hers was an earthier prettiness that came hair the shade of oatmeal and soft brown eyes. For one of her race, she was quite plain, but that mattered little to the people of Brooksong.
She could not be called introverted, nor shy. But she had about her a steadiness and soft spoken nature that endeared her to the inhabitants of the town. It was these qualities that kept her employed.
On this particularly sunny morning, around eleven o'clock, Tega was quite ready to meet the day. Her hair, which refused to decide if it was straight or wavy, was pinned behind her ears. She kept her hair cut short, only long enough to pin her bangs out of her brown eyes. She didn't like keeping her hair long, when it wasn't so short it got stuck on the hinges of her little brass spectacles. The spectacles were round and well kept, though not new, and they balanced precariously on her thin nose. It was through these spectacles that she saw just how horribly her unfortunate morning was going to be.
It had started so well too. She had woken up early, and nearly made it through her newly borrowed book on the little porch of her rented building before she tidied herself up to come to work. She was even wearing her favorite skirt. It was yellow and pleated around her knees. Yellow didn't really suit her, but she was very fond of it.
She would have liked to live in a world where if you were not quite through a book you really liked and if you were wearing a skirt that you very much liked to twirl in, and if the sun were coming so picturesquely through the large windows overlooking the bakery's spindly cafe tables and chairs, that nothing too terrible could ever come upon you.
Of course, she knew that horrible things didn't care if you were right in the middle of a very nice day, they were simply horrible.
She had seen the impending disaster when she turned back to heed the bell tinkling that announced a new visitor. She had been leaning in the swinging door separating the bakery's colorful front and industrious back and laughing quietly at the shouted commentary between the baker and the baker's teenaged daughter. She she turned she hoped the patron would be Mrs. Trundle, who was nearly six months pregnant and very fond of anything made with peaches, of which there was a new cobbler. But it was not a pink cheeked, round bellied, almost mother.
Tega's teeth clicked shut and each of the muscles in her stomach gripped her organs tightly. She felt very cold. She wanted to compulsively take off her spectacles and clean them, but she did not. Standing in the sun dappled bakery with a wide and glimmering smile was a black skinned drow. Behind him lurked a second, though this one was not smiling, but looking dour and harassed.
Tega was not well versed in the fashions of the Underdark, but she thought she could assume safely that the smiling drow did not heed them. His head was shaved entirely and a glittering eyepatch covered one of his eyes, his right. He was bedecked in all manner of tinkling jewelry and covered only in tight fitting leather pants and a high cut vest with nothing underneath. This particular choice revealed the entirety of his abdomen and nearly all but a small portion of his chest. Tega tugged at the hem of her snugly fit, cream colored sweater as she tried not to shiver.
The drow behind him did not share in his companion's tastes. His long hair was carefully brushed and gleamingly white. He wore long, dark robes that concealed nearly his entire body. Tega flitted her eyes between details of their clothes and hair, looking anywhere but their skin.
Tega's fingernails bit into her hand. She was inclined to scramble over the counter and flee, but a particularly well cultivated virtue of hers was level headedness. If they were planning a raid and had a hundred other drow waiting in the wings, there would be nothing for it and escaping these two might only make her a target. If they were not, it was perhaps best to keep them quite happy and hope they went away. She had no illusions about fighting passed them. If there were only one drow and he were blind, unarmed, and had only the use of one of his arms and neither of his legs, she probably couldn't fight passed him.
She returned the smile of the glittering drow only a little timidly. His smile broadened. If there was something she was not going to do, it was quake and shiver in front of them, that too, she thought might draw the attention of their violence.
She focused for a moment and addressed him with an unquavering voice, "Can I get you anything?" She even managed to maintain her smile.
He beamed grandly at her, "Yes," he said emotively and pointed down at a cupcake with decadent pink frosting, "That."
With twinkling eyes, he looked back at his companion, "Kimmuriel, vel'bol xun dos ssinssrin?" Tega didn't know the drow language but the unsmiling one didn't reply and scowled deeply at his companion.
Moving with purposeful slowness, Tega fetched the cupcake he had selected and put it on a yellow patterned plate alongside a fork. She straightened and reached across the counter, proffering the plate to him, he took it and dropped and entire gold piece into her hand. Each of his fingers was encrusted with a gem encrusted ring.
He turned with a flourish and settled himself into the most sun drenched of all the sun drenched tables, his companion, Kimmuriel, Tega had thought she had heard him called, sat across from him, back turned resolutely away from the sun.
Tega set her jaw, the gross overpayment irritated her. It could be argued that there were more pressing concerns. It could also be argued that the most sensible thing would be to take the payment and act very thankful for it. But if it had been just her to consider, she would have given him his change and let him know that she knew what he was about. Tega's hand even twitched on the lock of the money box as she deposited the coin. But Mrs. Huddles, the proprietor, had a teenage daughter and a much younger son. Regardless of pride, the gold was not Tega's to give back. She put it carefully in the money box and locked it back up securely.
As she would for any patron, she readied two cups of tea and carried them on a little white tray to the drows' table, laying it down softly on the table.
The bald drow looked up at her, smiling, "Thank you." he said happily.
It wasn't as though she was not frightened. But her fear manifested in still movements and a straight spine, rather than shaking hands and trembling lips.
Her gaze spanned the table as she turned away, spread out before them was some sort of ledger. She nearly flinched. It was inconsistent and messy, black ink marks in untidy rows and sloppy columns.
She retreated behind the counter, nearly quailing under the press of the other drow's dark glower. The ledger, illogically, irritated her nearly as much as the drow daring to come into a wholesome bakery like this at all. If one were to bother to keep a ledger, one ought to do it neatly enough for it to be of any use at all.
Her impulse was to fix it. Though this was, perhaps, not the most pragmatic instinct.
She tucked herself behind the counter, after having warned the baker and her daughter to stay put in the back, and hoped the drow would leave quickly. According to the well labeled timesheet in the counter's topmost drawer Tega was only to watch the counter until the afternoon after which the aforementioned teenage daughter, Ariel, who had only just turned fifteen, would take over. Tega was not able to be unmerciful enough to allow this. She instructed Mrs. Huddles to keep her daughter in the back and that Tega would be happy to stay until the dark skinned deviants left. Ariel regained a bit of her usual color after that.
The aforementioned dark skinned deviants stayed a long time. But they did not spend it alone. While the bald drow worked his way through a number of cupcakes, they met with a string of pretty girls in varying states of terror, all clutching the same, elegantly designed advertisement.
The grouchy one didn't say a word except to his companion and in drow but the other asked them a myriad questions, all while covertly watching the reactions of his companion with no small amount of amusement. He was, it seemed, looking for some sort of assistant, although he was more interested in twitching his eyebrows at them suggestively and praising their looks.
None of the pretty, unfailingly busty girls showed much promise as far as being of any use. Tega didn't judge them too harshly though, heavily inclined toward organization and academic excellence or not, it was hard to put one's best foot forward while sitting across from a pair of dark elves. One of them might have been a world renowned mathematician and simply quaked too much to let any of it come across. It may even have been possible for the one to have put them at ease if his snarling companion had not been with him. Although Tega suspected that it was the dour companion's disdain that made this entertaining for the other one.
It became increasingly anxiety inducing for Tega to watch the girls quake under the heavy stares of the drow and squirm uncomfortably when they whispered to each other in drow. Tega did wonder how much gold they had been promised to endure it, or if they were just too afraid to leave. The smiling one had introduced himself to her but, though usually quite good at names, she hadn't gotten it. It had started with a J she thought. To stave off the squirming sensations of watching the drow interact with the unfortunate surface girls, she tried idly to remember it.
Finally, after the ninth girl had fled from the door and the sun was beginning to set, the other one, Kimmuriel she was sure by now, stood angrily and strode out the door, growling, "Nindol zhah natha wahven d'ussta draeval!"
Laughing, the other followed him out, calling out cajolingly after him.
They left the ledger on the table.
Tega watched them get smaller and smaller down the street and wiped her hands on her narrow hips. She crossed to their table and, picking up a used plate, glanced down at the messy book.
She had always loved numbers. She loved how they didn't change and she loved how they didn't have any secrets or ulterior motives. She loved that if you knew how to talk to them you could make them do anything. She traced a skinny finger down the ledger, trying to follow the unkempt lines.
She frowned and put down the plate she had been holding as pretense and took up the ledger instead, giving it her full attention.
She looked carefully at the numbers, drow and elven shared an alphabet and even without understanding their language she understood the bookkeeping. Or rather, the excuse for bookkeeping. There was almost a pattern to the idiocy of the messy bookkeeping and she could follow it quite well after only a few pages. She bit at her lip and her blood quickened with excitement. There was something hidden. Something done not quite right. It was hidden quite well, underneath the poor penmanship and inconsistent style that disguised it. In her head she reorganized the little scrawled numbers and clicked them deftly into place in straight little lines that could be easily deciphered. After that it was all very obvious.
"Interesting reading?"
She turned her head swiftly and lowered the book, starring over it at the colorful drow, who had returned and was looking at her expectantly.
She glanced from the book to the drow and bit into her lip. She wasn't sure it was a good idea to tell him, what if it was him that was doing it? She should just smile idly and hand it back. She should go back behind the counter and let him leave. But she had become very excited to have found it and her desire to set the book to rights was becoming quite desperate.
"Do you keep these?"
He raised an elegant eyebrow, "Do you mean do I write them? No. No, I don't."
"But.." she hesitated, "But, it is your money they are keeping track of."
He preened and smiled lasciviously at her, "Yes."
"They are," she faltered only momentarily, "stealing from you."
The preening stopped and the smile slid from his face, replaced with sudden malice, "What?" The word was clipped and not in the musical, lilting tone of before.
This was what she had feared and she took a swift step backwards away from the drow. Although she kept the book clutched against her chest.
But, damage done, she thought she might at least show him everything, "Whoever is keeping your books is stealing from you. Quite a lot."
"How do you…?"
She let her enthusiasm overtake her trepidation and she spread the book on the table. in her excitement to explain the puzzle solving she nearly forgot to be afraid that he was a drow. She traced her fingers quickly down the pages, "You see, these inconsistencies, they are the same, can you see?" she showed him the each piece, her words flitting out of her mouth before she could stop herself, getting nearly jittery in her enthusiasm. More garbled numbers than communicable words were spilling out of her as she tried to show him the intricate puzzle work.
He had stopped trying to follower her fingers and was looking at her instead, his grin lingering at the edges of his mouth, "How long were you looking at this?"
She shrugged her thin shoulders, "A minute or so?"
"You discovered this in a minute or so?"
"Yes," she said shortly, "And whomever it is you've allowed to manage this leger should feel ashamed of both his penmanship and organization."
He leaned back on his heels and regarded her, "Could you do better?"
She pursed her lips then said in clipped words, "Well, to be frank an orc with a concussion could do better but of course I could."
He fixed her with a conniving grin, "Would you like a job?"
She bit her tongue, "I have a job."
"Yes, and while I'm sure bringing people pastries is quite fulfilling for you, how would you like to organize the records of complicated mercenary organization?" He smirked at her and tilted his eyebrows, "Lots of intrigue, plenty of little puzzles to sort out."
He was not entirely wrong. She enjoyed working for Mrs. Huddles. She enjoyed remembering what sort of bagel the early morning customers liked and she enjoyed keeping the front of the store in pristine condition. But the occupation lacked enough depth to utilize her.
"In the Underdark?" she asked.
He shrugged his nearly bare shoulders, "The city of Menzoberanzan specifically."
She frowned and looked at him with nearly improper intensity. A long moment passed, awkwardly long, but her eyes were hard and she answered in a sure voice, "Yes."
XXXXX
A long distance to the east from little Brooksong, stood a thick and imposing forest darkened by ropey vines and wet earth. Inside its trees crept unimagined beasts with snarling fangs or dripping venom. Outsiders to the forest, who weren't equipped with the rations or hard earned knowledge to survive its many perils, were often lost irrevocably, unable to even call out for help from the forest's indigenous inhabitants.
Because the forest did not have indigenous inhabitants and had not for many years. But it had once, many years before a peculiarly dressed drow struck an unexpected bargain with a small and tidy elf in a sunlit bakery to the west. That long stretch of time before the forest had played home to a tribe of elves.
These elves dressed themselves in little more than scraps of woven vines or animal skins. They decorated their skin with dark ink that told of accomplishments and the passage of time. They wound their hair in thick patterns and lived among the trees.
Among these elves had been one particularly tall and stiff jawed. His name was Khovus and he was, and had been since he had come of age, the chief of the elves who followed him. His well muscled arms and chest were covered in inky inscriptions of past deeds and felled foes and about his wrist hung a golden band made to look like branches.
Khovus had once been married, but the lady to whom he had bound himself for perpetuity was no longer among his people. The eldest of his children joined him in refusing the speak of it and the other three had been far too young to remember her departure.
Meika was the name of his eldest, a son, and following smartly in his father's footsteps. He was an adult by the standards of his people, that is, he had completed his ritual, and assisted his father in the leadership of the tribe. The youngest were twins, rare among elves and supposedly a sign of good fortune. Both of them were also sons, Shikra and Drindok.
They were bright and inseparable boys who managed to win the affection of their father no matter his reticence to give it out.
Khovus' middle child, and his only daughter was something of an enigma to the charismatic and outspoken leader. Tega, as her mother had named her, was more like her mother than any of his other children in looks but her demeanor was like that of neither her father nor her mother.
She was small, had always been small, and her body refused to grow the defined and quick moving muscles of her people. Her skin remained a milky pale like her moon elf mother, but her hair didn't mimic her mother's gleaming ebony be stayed a dull mousey brown.
Her looks he didn't so much mind, but she was not like his other children who were bursting at the seams for adventure and excitement. Nor did she possess their innate physical ability. He had not had to teach them to climb the vines into their lofty, tree borne home. But no matter how many times he instructed her she could not pull herself up on her own.
It was always a fight to get Tega to come out hunting with him, although she desperately needed the practice. She was much more content to sit reading and rereading one of the eight or so books her mother had left behind in a trunk.
It wasn't that Khovus didn't love his daughter, he just found that it was difficult to connect with her. His sons didn't require talking in order for him to feel close to them, they prowled silently alongside each other or crafted weapons side by side but not the girl. She liked to sit and to listen.
He worried about her. It was becoming more and more clear as she grew and failed to become any sort of hunter or fighter that she had not been designed for this particular home. It was dangerous and people who couldn't defend themselves didn't last very long. For a number of years he had wondered just what he was to do with little Tega.
XXXXX
When the drow had introduced himself for a second time, she had remembered his name, Jarlaxle. His office, when they arrived, was lush. It was covered with a thick and immensely soft carpet and hung with all manner of fineries. His desk stood near the back, centered between the two side walls. It was a grand thing, made of carved stone with many locked drawers and a plush purple cushioned chair.
Tucked behind the door, pushed nearly into the corner was another desk, this one smaller with a little stool to sit on. There were few adornments on this one, but Tega ran her fingers along the edge of it, her head tilted.
Jarlaxle tapped the desk smartly, "So, you'll work here, I'll have all of the old books brought up to you and you can start your reorganizing."
She furrowed her brow and looked over at him, "Why is it lit?"
"What?"
"Why do you keep your office lit? I thought drow prefer infravision."
He spun around and glimmered at her, his white teeth flashing in the lantern light, "Oh, they do! I like to put the Matron's off their guard!" He said grandly, with the air of someone trying to impress.
She worried at her lip and peered through her glasses at his lavish desk and the papers scattered messily atop it. "And I'm sure you can't write without lighting. I'm sure you write a lot."
He deflated a bit and glanced down at his immaculate fingernails, "Well yes."
She pulled the stool out quietly and sat down, smoothing her skirt beneath her. She looked across the office at Jarlaxle, who was watching her, she straightened her spectacles.
Despite hiring her and escorting her from her sun warmed apartment into the dark cave of the Bregen D'aerthe headquarters, he didn't seem to know quite what to make of her. But it did even things out that she had no idea what to make of him.
She imagined that the desk had been put in the corner of his office because he objective on the surface seemed to have been ornamentation. Not that she was complaining. He wanted her alive and she felt more comfortable under his direct protection.
A knock interrupted their sizing each other up.
"Enter." Jarlaxle called, he flashed her another toothy smile, "Your books."
A scowling and rather short drow male came in, carrying a large pile of leather bound volumes of different sizes and thicknesses. Tega flinched.
He approached her desk, sneering at her threateningly. She held firm. From a distance above he dropped the books so they thunked loudly on the rickety desk. She curled her fingers into her skirt.
Relieved of the books the surly drow turned to go, but he was called back by Jarlaxle's cheery voice, "Draerel!"
The drow turned and took nearly hesitant steps back to Jarlaxle's desk.
Jarlaxle had risen while Draerel was depositing the books and circled around his desk. He was now leaning almost casually against it. A smile bright on his lips. Draerel stopped a few feet from Jarlaxle, apprehension clear on his features.
His smile dissolving, Jarlaxle lunged elegantly forward, a sword that seemed to grow from his hand piercing Draerel's heart and skewering him in the middle of the office, "Xun naut olplynir dal uns'aa." Jarlaxle said darkly, then he repeated himself in Common, "Do not steal from me."
The attack had startled Tega. Although she had suspected that whomever had been stealing would not meet a nice ending, she wasn't entirely ready to watch someone be killed at her feet. The body scraped off the blade and tumbled to the floor. She reasoned that this is what she had gotten herself into but nonetheless stiffened, keeping herself very still. The drow had already been dead when the Jarlaxle had repeated his threat in Common and Tega was quite certain it had been meant for her.
Jarlaxle was looking at her, she bit the inside of her lip for only a moment before calmly saying, "I'm going to need blank consistent ledger volumes."
He tilted his head back and laughed with real mirth, "You're better than I would have given you credit for."
Anxious to see if she lived up to his hopes, he got her her new ledger volumes within the hour.]
The moment she got her fingers on them she began the arduous process of recopying old records from their ungainly scrawling to neat little lines. She sat in perfect silence, the slim metal pen scratching softly across the pages. It felt, to Tega, like a cleaning of her own brain. The messy ledgers that she didn't fully understand yet had introduced an unwelcome clutter that she was very much enjoying setting to rights. It, had the added challenge of sums disappearing every so often. Beside the ledger she had a dark slate board she used for her calculations.
Jarlaxle glanced up at her occasionally as she steadfastly worked, looking up briefly only when his door opened to allow in the stream of visitors who had scheduled meetings with him. Other than the rigidity of her shoulders, her demeanor didn't change, even with the addition of the, often scowling, drow who came and went from the cozy chairs set before his desk.
It was late when he dismissed the drow who guarded him from the extradimensional pockets festooned throughout the office. This did startle her. Then, of course, who wouldn't be startled by fifteen drow males slipped from seemingly nowhere armed to the teeth?
She watched as they stalked from the room, holding her pen very tightly, her thin nose flared. Jarlaxle rose after them and thoroughly locked the door behind them. His uninterrupted evenings were when he got through most of his tedious paperwork. Three long and dry reports were waiting for him and a dozen missives that needed his consultation. He settled back behind his desk and retrieved his own plumed quill.
Tega worked with him, late into the night.
When, at last, his eyes itched with tiredness and the final missive was tucked away to be sent off by messenger first thing in the morning, he rose and stretched. Tega looked up at him.
"I will show you to your chambers, if you'd like."
She cleaned off the tip of her pen, carefully erased the work on her slate and, marking her pages, closed the ledgers, locking them in her desk. She rose, flexing her, surely sore, hands. "That would be lovely."
She paid careful attention as he led her town the twisting hallways, determined to learn the route between her chambers and the office by heart. It seemed a dangerous place to get lost.
He opened a door for her and allowed her to pass him, into the small room. He grinned at her, "The door is warded and locked from the inside and my mercenaries have been warned against troubling you, but," he said, proffering a slim pendant, "Do shout if they try anything."
She took the pendant, "Goodnight, Jarlaxle."
He beamed, "Goodnight, Tega."
It went on very much like that for weeks. Tega very carefully fixing the band's records while Jarlaxle met with scowling Elderboys and irate Matron Mothers and send letters and commands throughout the drow inhabited underdark.
Six weeks into her employment, she finished recopying the logs and they now sat on a shelf that had been installed behind her desk, organized and labelled chronologically.
Jarlaxle had barely noticed she had finished, she moved so efficiently from one task to the next. Only because of her tidy system and a rather lax day for him did he spot something had changed.
She had returned to the earliest log book, one copied from an original made long before the thieving and now dead ex-accountant had been a member of the organization. It was easy to tell what she was working with, a dark hole left in the spot on the shelf where the book should be.
Her transparency intrigued Jarlaxle, nearly as much as her enthusiasm for what he might consider one of the most boring tasks that couldn't be avoided.
But he said nothing, allowing her to continue with whatever project she had come up with. He didn't have the time to coddle her into what work had to be done and he wanted to discover what she came up with one her own.
It took her three months to finish this project. But this time she alerted him to it's completion. During the hours after Jarlaxle's guard had been dismissed and when they finally rested, she got up from her desk, crossed the room and deposited a slim stack of papers, labeled, numbered, and clipped together onto the corner of his desk without a word.
He looked up at her, her bangs, as they were every day, were clipped out of her eyes and her brass spectacles sat squarely on her nose. She had a pale blue blouse peaking out of a white sweater and a skirt that brushed her knees.
"What is this?"
She wriggled her nose to push her glasses back and, when that was ineffective, took the bow between her fingers and nudged them back instead, "It's a fiscal report." She flipped the cover page and revealed immaculately crafted graphs, "It tracks your gains and losses through the last century."
Finished with his questions or not, she turned and sat back down at the rickety stool behind her desk.
Jarlaxle put down Kimmuriel's report on the defenses of a doomed house. As necessary as it was, Kimmuriel could write a report on a dashing young rogue making his way through all the finest specimens in a particularly well kept brothel and it would still be intolerably dry. He picked up Tega's report instead.
It was impressively lovely. Perhaps not brilliance in its own right but she had turned the last centuries gapped and inexact record keeping into meticulous depiction of growth and decay. He skipped to a portion labelled, "House War Profitability Margins - Menzoberanzan" and scanned it. He grinned.
She had recorded and determined a ratio of of house defenses to average profit and then simplified it to an estimated requisite cost of a house war dependent upon the house's rank.
He glanced over the report at her. She was back at work, ink staining the tips of her fingers, with an adorable little smear of it across the tip of her nose. He watched her shift uncomfortably on her stool, readjust, and return to writing.
He leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet up on the desk, thoroughly perusing her report. He dog eared pages and made notes at his leisure. After a few moments, and when he as less entranced with her gift than he had been a minute ago, he blinked and called over to her, "You wrote the report in drow."
She looked up, "Of course I did, this is a drow institution."
He chuckled, "You should improve your grammar."
She flushed nearly crimson, "I can rewrite it."
He laughed, "Nonsense, it's endearing" he winked roguishly.
She blinked very quickly and adjusted her glasses, staring back down at the papers in front of her.
He watched her bite at her bottom lip a few times then look purposefully back up at him, "Would I be able to get a straight edge with cork lining the bottom?"
"I don't know." He said sighing, "That is a very tall request."
Minute lines appeared between her brows, "Then enjoy the imprecise graphs." She said cuttingly.
Jarlaxle really did laugh at that, "Well, if the precision of your graphs is on the line I suppose you shall have to have your straight edge."
The next day she came to her desk to discover a straight edge sitting atop a massive pile of loose leaf papers. She paged through some of it, "What is this?"
Jarlaxle glanced up, "All the records I could find, weapons and jewelry we've taken from houses or been given as payment, casualties, where we picked up recruits; anything I thought you could make use of."
Her eyes lit up and she pressed her lips together as she fixed him with a little smile. "I'll get right to work."
An hour later she barely acknowledged him when he said he was going to a meeting and would be out the rest of the day. He dismissed the guard before he left and locked her into the office. Although he had been particularly fierce in his renewed order that no harm was to come to her, he didn't trust a fifteen very bored drow alone with her all day.
And now she had a new and exciting project. She had always had an affinity to numbers but had had very few opportunities to put her knowledge to any practical use. She wondered if this was a first time occurrence or system that would be established. When she completed her next project would she be rewarded with new tools and interesting records?
She intended to find out.