An Error in the Ledgers
Chapter 1
In a dimpled valley between green hills was tucked a pretty little town. The town was rather nicely cared for as towns in these parts generally went. The streets were well paved with the large cream colored stones found around the brook. The houses were neatly thatched with goldenrod straw and the buildings were, for the most part, promptly repaired and decorated with love.
It was down one of these nice little streets between neat little houses that two very unwelcomed figures parted the frightened human inhabitants like they carried the plague. The bolder of the pair flashing his brilliant white teeth at the locals in wide smiles from under his wide-brimmed hat, flipping its red feather to-and-fro as if it had a life of its own. His dour companion shared none of his congeniality but did share his ebony dark drow skin. But smile or no, both of them caused shutters to be slammed and children to be rushed away from their path.
The drow, the flamboyant one obviously leading, made their way unconcerned about the fear they were leaving in their wake, did not go to the first most expected place in town: a seedy bar, nor even the second: a wealthy villa where secret deals might be struck. Instead they walked boldly through the pink painted door of a cherished little bakery.
The teenage girl refilling the display case with darling pastries turned pale and fled into the back to find her mother, and the bakery's owner.
"What are we doing here, Jarlaxle?" Kimmuriel asked his chipper companion in the Drow language, "I understand my punishment, this is enough, there is no need to see this through."
Jarlaxle only winked, a silly effect in his eyepatch and rang the little bell at the counter.
The teenager did not reappear, nor did her mother, who had left with her out the back. But they were not abandoned without service, an elf, perhaps the only in the town, pushed through the double swinging door from the kitchen to the counter.
She fixed her round, brass spectacles properly on her thin nose in a practiced motion and smiled stiffly at the drow. If they were planning a raid and had a hundred other drow waiting in the wings, there would be nothing for it and she was doomed or captured already. If they were not on a raid, it was perhaps best to keep these two 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. At least one of them was quite visibly all muscles, she on the other hand was mostly knobbly knees and bony elbows, not exactly the makings of a great warrior.
She focused for a moment and addressed them with an unquavering voice, "I am Tega, can I get you anything?" She even managed to maintain her smile.
Jarlaxle 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, addressing him in their own language, "Kimmuriel, you want one don't you?" Which drew nothing but a scowl from Kimmuriel.
Moving with purposeful, exact motions, 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, Kimmuriel 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 that teenage daughter and a much younger son to think about. 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.
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 jutted 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, which she recognized as not exactly practical, was to march over there and fix it.
She resisted the impulse and shoved her spindly fingered hands into the pockets of her skirt and watched the drow. They hadn't just come for snacks, they had come for business. Apparently they'd brought the ledgers to show to a string of pretty girls in varying states of terror, all clutching the same, elegantly designed advertisement.
Jarlaxle asked them all a myriad questions, all while covertly watching Kimmuriel's reactions 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. Tega guessed by the behavior of the two drow, that the real reason was some sort of show of force. Look, I can make you sit up on the surface all day and watch me interview pretty girls.
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 Jarlaxle to have put them at ease if Kimmuriel 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.
Finally, after the ninth girl had fled from the door and the sun was beginning to set, Kimmuriel had lost his temper and rose in a flounce of robes. He did not wait for Jarlaxle but strode out the door. Jarlaxle laughed and flounced after him, calling out cajolingly to him as he did, tossing another wink Tega's way as he finally left the bakery.
There, abandoned on the table, was the ledger.
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 here, just beneath the mess. 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, staring 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 burned up her belly until the words just spilled out of her.
"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."
"Well whoever is keeping these is..." 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, "I said that 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 follow 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 whoever it is you've allowed to manage this leger should feel ashamed of both his penmanship and his 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 Menzoberranzan specifically."
She frowned and looked at him with nearly improper intensity. Of course he expected her to say no, he had really expected her to toss the book back at him and gasp. He wasn't usually one for frightening store clerks, but he was angry he was being stolen from.
She continued to look at him, bore into him really, her muddy grey-brown eyes practically scorching him. And then she said it, "Yes."
Deep in the West, beyond the commonly tramped ground, 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 this 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 east. The forest left no mark or memory of them at all, but long ago, there had been a tribe of Wild 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 to speak of it and the other three had been far too young to remember her departure.
Meika, the 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, Khiva and Khorvosa.
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. The other children had the marks of their parents all over them, Meika with his father's strong hands and stern jaw, the twins with their mother's black hair and near luminescent eyes. But Tega, as her mother had named her, carried nothing of her mother or her father with her; mousy brown hair that could not decide if it would be straight like her mother's but was certainly not wild like her father's, a frame that was neither the muscled cords of her father nor the elegant limbs of her mother, eyes that did not glow like her mother's moon or her father's fire, but squinted so much you almost could not see the unimpressive color.
Her looks Khovus 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 knew it wasn't a function of her being a girl, the tribe had lots of girls and all of them did just as much, if not more, hunting than his boys. They made themselves spears and wove between trees and swung on vines, but not Tega.
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 her.
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."
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 then neither did she know quite 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. Blood poured out of him over Jarlaxle's sword and hand and onto the floor. The redness of blood always surprised Tega who never really expected it to be so very red.
"Xun naut olplynir dal uns'aa." Jarlaxle said darkly, then he repeated himself in Common, "Do not steal from me."
Tega had not suspected that whoever had been stealing would meet a nice ending, but 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 stood very still and tried to reason that this is what she had gotten herself. She straightened her glasses. 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 only an hour after the body had been cleaned up from his office.
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 extra-dimensional pockets festooned throughout the office. This did startle her. But then 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 and she fixed her glasses. 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 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 sent 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 on her own.
It took her three months to finish this project. But this time she alerted him to its 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 roundly on her nose. He took a moment to look her over before he made his way to her report. Her fashion sense had not changed to match his aesthetic, shed kept the blue blouse peeking out of a white sweater and a skirt that brushed her knees.
He finally looked down at the neat little stack of papers, "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 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 fiddled with her straight edge and wondered if this was a one 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.