Startup 80b: Around Town (April fools day joke chapter)

A/N: Hey everyone! Experimenting with something new to get more chapters out. Let me know what you think!

Rova 30, morning

The goblin pups had been missing for approximately forty-five minutes before anyone thought to tell me.

I absorbed this information with the particular stillness of a man who had survived too much to be surprised by anything, and yet found himself surprised nonetheless. Twelve goblin pups. Forty-five minutes. In a Callistrian temple full of priestesses who had, until this morning, maintained a fairly positive opinion of me.

“Where,” I said, with great care, “were they last seen?”

Naomi, who had delivered this news with the expression of someone who had drawn the shortest straw in a very competitive drawing, pointed down the hall.

“The kitchens,” she said. “They got into the kitchens.”

I looked down the hall. Then I looked back at Naomi.

“How many of them are still in the kitchens?”

“None of them,” she said.

I took a deep breath. The air in the House of Stolen Kisses smelled of incense and beeswax candles and the faint floral sweetness of whatever the priestesses used to scent their linens. It was, under normal circumstances, a deeply pleasant smell.

Under current circumstances it served primarily as a reminder of how much I stood to lose if twelve feral goblin children permanently damaged my relationship with Dindreanne’s temple.

“Right,” I said. “Let’s go find them.”

••••••••••

The market district of Quent spread before Ve’ra like a painting executed by someone who had never seen a painting but had heard one described in considerable detail by a person who had. It was loud. It was fragrant. It was absolutely teeming with the kind of people who would walk directly into her if she stood still for more than four seconds.

She was wearing Sosima’s face.

This was not Ve’ra’s preferred face. Sosima’s face was fine, objectively. It was a composed, professional face with good cheekbones and the particular blankness of someone who had survived sixty years of continuous disaster through sheer competence. Ve’ra had nothing against it. She simply wished that she could wear her own a bit more often.

Still. The captain had asked her to pick up several items from a specific list, and he had asked her to do it without looking like herself, and Sosima had been the only crew member who fit the physical description of someone who might plausibly be running errands in the merchant quarter on a Tuesday morning.

Ve’ra consulted the list.

Three bottles of Chelish red. The good kind, not the kind that tastes like vinegar aged in regret. Syl will know the difference and she will not be quiet about it.

Two pounds of dried saltfish. Ask for Berrada’s stall. Tell her the captain sends his regards. She’ll know what that means.

One small pot of the alchemical ink Rowe uses for runes. It should be dark blue, almost black. If they try to sell you the purple kind, leave.

One copy of whatever the Quent Observer is running today.

If you see anything interesting, us your judgment.

Ve’ra studied this final item for a moment.

She had very good judgment. The captain said so frequently, usually right before or right after something went wrong that was not her fault.

She folded the list, tucked it away, and went to find the wine first.

••••••••••

The first goblin pup was discovered in a linen closet on the second floor, which was impressive given that the second floor was accessible only via a staircase that had no business being climbable by a creature fourteen inches tall. He was sitting in the middle of a pile of silk sheets, eating what appeared to be an entire wheel of cheese, and regarding me with the serene confidence of someone who had not yet learned that consequences existed.

“How did you get up here?” I asked.

He offered me a piece of cheese.

His name, insofar as any of them had names yet, was something that translated roughly from Goblin as “the one who bites the loudest,” which I had shortened to Chomp for practical purposes. Chomp was the most confident of the twelve pups and the one most likely to be found somewhere he absolutely should not be, doing something he absolutely should not be doing, with an expression of total innocence that suggested he had invented the concept.

I extracted him from the linen closet, tucked him under one arm, and descended to find Naomi waiting with a pillowcase.

“A pillowcase?” I said.

“They like small enclosed spaces,” Naomi said, holding it open.

This was, somehow, accurate. Chomp went in without complaint.

“That’s one,” I said. “Where are the others?”

Naomi’s expression suggested she found this question somewhat ambitious.

••••••••••

The wine merchant had deeply kind eyes that spoke of a life lived at the intersection of commerce and genuine passion, a man for whom each bottle was not merely a product but a small act of faith in the enduring capacity of human civilization to produce beauty even in difficult times.

He also had no Chelish red.

“Sold out this morning,” he said, not unkindly. “I’ve got a very nice Taldane white, if you’re interested. Or there’s a local vintage, made from the island grapes. People say it tastes like the sea.”

Ve’ra considered this.

“The captain specified Chelish red,” she said.

“I understand,” the merchant said. “I’m simply saying that as a practical matter—”

“He also specified the good kind,” Ve’ra said. “Do you have the good kind of anything else?”

The merchant brightened. He had, it turned out, a great deal to say on this subject. Ve’ra listened with the patient attention of someone who had existed as an insubstantial concept for the better part of a year and had therefore learned to treat unexpected detours as simply another feature of having a self.

She left with two bottles of a Sargavan import the merchant described as “aggressively honest” and one bottle of the local vintage, on the grounds that she was curious what the sea tasted like when someone had thought about it carefully.

The captain had said to use her judgment.

••••••••••

Pups two through four were located in the temple’s small private garden, which was walled and technically secure and yet had somehow become home to what appeared to be the early stages of an agricultural project. Three of the pups had found a trowel. They had been busy.

I stood at the garden gate and regarded the excavation with a complicated heart.

The Callistrian garden was, or had been, a serene and carefully maintained space featuring a small fountain, several varieties of fragrant climbing flowers, and a stone bench worn smooth by decades of quiet contemplation. It retained the fountain. The flowers were mostly still present, though they had been rearranged in ways that suggested a philosophical difference of opinion about where flowers should go. The bench had acquired a small tunnel underneath it.

The three pups responsible looked up at me from their excavation with bright, alert eyes. One of them was wearing a flower as a hat. She had found the largest flower in the garden for this purpose. It was a substantial flower and she wore it with the dignity of someone who had been waiting her whole life for the right hat.

I looked at the garden. I looked at the pups. I looked at the flower hat.

“Come on,” I said. “Back in the pillowcase.”

The one with the flower hat kept the flower. I decided this was a battle I did not need to fight today.

••••••••••

Berrada’s stall was not where the captain’s list said it would be.

This was not, Ve’ra reflected, the captain’s fault. Markets moved. Stalls relocated. People made decisions that affected the spatial layout of commerce without consulting the people who might later need to find them. This was simply a feature of the world as it existed, and Ve’ra had enough experience with the world as it existed to know that the correct response was adaptation rather than frustration.

She asked three people where Berrada’s stall had gone. The first two didn’t know. The third was Berrada’s nephew, who was operating a separate stall selling dried fruit two rows over and who directed her with the slightly harried efficiency of a young man who had answered this question many times today.

Berrada herself was a compact woman of middle years with the particular kind of watchfulness that Ve’ra associated with people who paid close attention to everything as a professional habit. She looked at Ve’ra — looked at Sosima’s face — and her expression shifted in a way that was subtle enough that most people would have missed it.

Ve’ra was not most people.

“The captain sends his regards,” Ve’ra said.

Berrada looked at her for a moment longer than was strictly necessary. Then she reached under the counter and produced a paper-wrapped package that was noticeably heavier than two pounds of dried saltfish had any business being.

“Tell him he’s behind on his correspondence,” Berrada said. “Two weeks.”

“I’ll pass it along,” Ve’ra said.

She tucked the package under her arm and moved on. She did not open it. She had very good judgment, and her very good judgment told her that packages that were heavier than expected were best delivered intact and unopened, and that questions about their contents were best asked of the person who had sent her to collect them.

The captain could explain. He usually did, eventually, when pressed.

••••••••••

Pups five, six, and seven had found the temple’s small library.

I want to be clear that I did not, in any way, feel that this was my fault. I also want to be clear that I understood completely why Linu, who had discovered them before me and was waiting in the doorway with an expression of geological patience, might feel that it was at least partially my fault. I was their guardian. Guardianship implied some degree of responsibility for the actions of the guarded.

“They can’t read,” I said, surveying the scene.

“No,” Linu agreed.

“So the books are probably fine.”

“The books,” Linu said, “are fine. The books are not the issue.”

The issue, which I was now close enough to assess properly, was that pups five, six, and seven had discovered that books, when stacked in sufficient quantity and with sufficient structural ingenuity, could be arranged into something that functioned as a fort. It was, genuinely, an impressive fort. They had used the larger volumes as load-bearing walls and filled in the gaps with slim pamphlets, and somewhere inside the architecture they had acquired a candle, the flame of which was visible through a gap they had thoughtfully left for ventilation.

“There’s a candle in there,” I said.

“Yes,” Linu said.

I looked at the fort. The fort looked back at me through its ventilation gap, from which a small orange flame burned with what I could only describe as determination.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to need you to back up a little.”

••••••••••

The alchemical supply shop was run by a young woman with ink-stained fingers and the focused energy of someone who had chosen her profession at approximately age seven and had never reconsidered the decision for even a moment. She listened to Ve’ra’s description of the ink required with the attentiveness of a professional who took correct ink very seriously.

“Dark blue, almost black,” the young woman said. “For rune work?”

“Yes,” Ve’ra said.

“Combat applications or structural?”

Ve’ra considered the question. She thought about Rowe. She thought about the particular way Rowe looked at things she was about to set on fire, which was a look of calm professional assessment that Ve’ra had come to recognize as one of the more reliable indicators that something was about to go very wrong for someone.

“Combat,” Ve’ra said.

The young woman nodded with the grave satisfaction of someone whose suspicions had been confirmed. She produced three small pots from beneath the counter and lined them up for inspection. Two were dark blue, almost black. One was purple.

“Not the purple one,” Ve’ra said.

“No,” the young woman agreed, with feeling. She put it back. “The difference is the iron content. The purple bleeds under heat. If your runesmith is doing anything with fire—”

“She is,” Ve’ra said.

“Then definitely not the purple one,” the young woman said. She pushed the two correct pots forward. “I’d recommend both. The second one has slightly higher iron content, which means the runes hold longer but they’re harder to draw. Depends on your runesmith’s technique.”

Ve’ra bought both. The captain had said to use her judgment.

She was using quite a lot of it today.

••••••••••

The candle situation was resolved without significant incident, if we define significant incident as not including the small scorch mark on the third shelf from the bottom, which was well below eye level and which I was reasonably confident could be covered by moving a medium-sized book approximately six inches to the left.

Pups five, six, and seven were retrieved. The fort was partially disassembled, though I left the load-bearing walls because I felt they demonstrated genuine structural understanding and I didn’t want to discourage that kind of thinking entirely.

That brought the count to seven. Five remaining.

Naomi’s pillowcase was getting heavy.

“You could just carry them,” I said.

“I could,” she agreed, and did not.

Pup eight, Moy, was found almost immediately, sitting in the hallway outside the library with an air of complete innocence that suggested she had been there the entire time and had no idea what all the fuss was about. She was the smallest of the twelve, and she had a habit of appearing in places she could not possibly have gotten to via any observable route. I had started to suspect she was simply very fast and very good at sitting still.

“Where have you been?” I asked her.

She blinked at me with enormous red eyes.

I put her in the pillowcase.

••••••••••

The Quent Observer had a front page story about the trial.

Ve’ra stood at the news-seller’s stall and read the headline twice. Then she read the first paragraph. Then she folded the paper under her arm and paid for it with the particular composure of someone who had decided to deliver information in person rather than form opinions about it in public.

The headline was not, strictly speaking, inaccurate. It was simply framed in a way that prioritized a particular interpretation of events over several other equally valid interpretations of events, and that particular interpretation happened to be the least flattering one available.

She thought about the captain reading it.

She thought about Syl reading it.

She thought about Syl reading it while also reviewing the financial ledger.

Ve’ra bought two copies. One to deliver. One because she had a feeling the first copy might not survive the morning intact.

She tucked both papers away and took a moment to review her list. Wine, acquired. Saltfish, acquired, plus mysterious package. Ink, acquired, both varieties. Newspaper, acquired, two copies. The final item: if you see anything interesting, use your judgment.

She looked around the market district of Quent, which was a city that had, by all available evidence, committed fully to being interesting as a core civic value.

A stall three rows over was selling what appeared to be bottled lightning. Not metaphorical bottled lightning. Actual lightning, in small glass bottles, each one flickering at a slightly different frequency, arranged in rows by color like the world’s most dangerous spice rack.

Ve’ra walked over to look at it.

The merchant was an elderly halfling man with the kind of beard that took decades of dedicated effort to achieve, and he watched her approach with the benevolent patience of someone who had been waiting for exactly this customer.

“Alchemical?” Ve’ra asked.

“Goblintech,” the halfling said, with the careful neutrality of someone who had strong opinions about this distinction but had learned that expressing them was bad for business. “The little fellows make them up on Bag Island. Each one’s got about thirty seconds of charge. Good for starting fires, emergency light sources, or—” he paused, appearing to select his next words with care— “enthusiastic negotiation.”

Ve’ra picked one up. It buzzed faintly against Sosima’s fingers. Through the glass, the lightning was a deep gold, almost amber, pulsing with something that felt less like electricity and more like impatience.

“How much?” she asked.

“Four silver each,” the halfling said. “Six for twenty.”

Ve’ra thought about the captain. She thought about the crew. She thought about the particular quality of their lives, which was a quality that could be fairly described as one in which small portable sources of emergency light and enthusiastic negotiation had historically proven useful.

“I’ll take six,” she said.

The captain had said to use her judgment. She was using an enormous amount of it today and she felt he should appreciate that.

••••••••••

Pups nine and ten were in the kitchen.

Not the kitchen they had originally escaped from. A different kitchen. The temple, it turned out, had two kitchens, and I had not known this until pups nine and ten demonstrated it through the applied methodology of being somewhere I had already searched.

The second kitchen was smaller and appeared to be used primarily for the preparation of ritual foods, which were largely symbolic and therefore not particularly edible by goblin standards, a fact that pups nine and ten had apparently discovered and were in the process of expressing opinions about through the medium of creative rearrangement.

A priestess I didn’t know was standing in the doorway with the particular expression of a woman who had dedicated her life to a goddess of lust, ****, and trickery, and was nonetheless finding this specific situation somewhat outside her professional experience.

“Are those yours?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I apologize. They’re still learning.”

“Learning what?” she asked.

I thought about this.

“Boundaries,” I said.

She looked at the ritual foods, which had been arranged into what was either a very crude map or an extremely abstract portrait of someone. She looked at the pups, who looked back at her with the serene confidence of artists who had completed a work and were waiting for critical assessment.

“The one on the left has good instincts,” she said, after a moment. Then she stepped back and let me collect them.

••••••••••

Ve’ra found pup eleven on the way back to the temple.

This was not something she had been expecting to find on her errands, but she had very good judgment and her very good judgment had learned to expand its definition of “something interesting” considerably since she had started existing.

The pup — she recognized him because he was the one who had discovered, apparently through rigorous personal experimentation, that if you bit something hard enough it usually stopped moving — was sitting on a market stall counter eating a mango with the focused intensity of someone encountering a mango for the first time and finding it transformative.

The stall owner was watching him with the expression of a man who had not been paid for the mango and was not certain how to raise this point.

Ve’ra stopped.

The pup looked at her. Then he looked at the mango. Then he looked back at her with the expression of someone who was very willing to share but needed it understood that this was a gift freely given and not a concession.

Ve’ra produced a coin from her pocket and set it on the counter. The stall owner’s expression shifted from uncertain to relieved. The pup, apparently satisfied that the social contract had been honored, returned to the mango.

Ve’ra looked at the pup. She looked at her bag, which was already very full. She looked at the pup again.

“Come on,” she said.

The pup considered this offer. He took a large final bite of mango, tucked the remainder under his arm with the decisive efficiency of someone who had just made a very important decision about resource management, and climbed into the bag with the air of someone who had been planning this outcome from the beginning.

Ve’ra looked down at the bag, which was now making small contented sounds.

She walked back to the temple.

••••••••••

I found pup twelve in my room.

She was sitting on my bed, going through my reference document with the focused attention of someone who could not read a single word of it but was taking the project very seriously nonetheless. She had organized the pages into three piles according to a classification system that I could not immediately identify, and she was in the process of adding a fourth when I opened the door.

She looked up at me.

I looked at the piles.

I looked at her.

She held up a page and said something in Goblin that translated, roughly, as: “This one goes here.”

I sat down on the edge of the bed. The pillowcase, which Naomi had handed off to me somewhere around pup nine, made muffled sounds of various kinds. Outside the window, Quent went about its afternoon with the cheerful indifference of a city that had seen stranger things than whatever was currently happening in this particular room.

“You know what,” I said. “You might be right.”

She put the page in the fourth pile with an air of profound satisfaction.

The door opened. Ve’ra stepped in, set a very full bag on the floor, and looked at the scene with the particular expression she used when she had decided to observe before commenting.

The bag made a contented sound. A small hand emerged, holding a mango.

“I found one,” Ve’ra said.

“I found one too,” I said.

We looked at each other.

“I also got wine,” she said, “but not Chelish red. The merchant said he was out. I got something Sargavan instead. He said it was aggressively honest.”

“That sounds like something Syl would drink ironically,” I said.

“I thought so too,” Ve’ra said. She set the Observer on the bed next to me. “You should read that before Syl does.”

I looked at the headline.

I looked at Ve’ra.

“You bought two copies,” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Good thinking.”

She produced the bottled lightning from the bag with the air of someone presenting a gift they were fairly confident would be well received.

I held one up. Inside the glass, the amber charge pulsed with patient impatience, waiting for someone to need it.

“Thirty seconds each,” Ve’ra said. “The merchant called them useful for enthusiastic negotiation.”

I thought about my current legal situation. I thought about the debt deadline. I thought about Druvalia Thrune, wherever she was, already planning the next move.

“Buy more of these,” I said.

“I thought you might say that,” Ve’ra said. “I already went back.”

••••••••••

April Fools, and I have no more idea who the fuck Berrada is than Ve’ra.

As delightful as this entirely ai generated chapter was, I don’t think I’ll be making a habit of it. If you’ve ever wondered what an ai would do if I fed it my entire story and then told it to write a new chapter, this. I might have gotten more faithful results if I’d trained a model from scratch on my story, but that is far outside the confines of what is worth doing for a random April Fools day joke.