Deephouse: Further adventures involving the employees of a mid-level adventuring corporation. New to Deephouse? Start here.
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The interviews were conducted in Durgin’s office.
He sat behind his desk. Fidgeting. Feeling like a fraud.
Up to this point, being foreman had only entailed shady negotiations and the near-certainty it was all going to end in disaster. Nothing he wasn’t unfamiliar with. But sitting on the other side of the desk, from a place of implied superiority, was a new experience. He didn’t care for it.
He and Yeji had agreed there was no point in interviewing Blasé or Klyde. Neither had motive to undermine Deephouse. That left 13 interviews. 11, if the so-called triplets insisted on being interviewed together; Yeji assured him they would.
11 interviews. That was a lot of talking. He sipped his breakfast mead. It was going to be a long day.
He touched his chest. Yeji’s amulet tucked under his shirt, pressed up to his skin. It’d burn slightly in the presence of a spoken falsehood. A clever device, and useful to their purposes. With some careful but pointed questions, perhaps he could root out the traitor before the day was done.
The door thumped, jumping in the frame.
“Aye, come in.”
A female dwarf shouldered inside. She wore a heavy leather apron atop her clothes. Thick gloves tucked into her belt. Her pants had more pockets than Durgin had ever seen in one place, all of them bulging, several with something poking out. Ruddy cheeks, a singed eyebrow, copper hair pulled back into a tight braid. She looked at Durgin with flat eyes and sat.
He glanced at the roster. “Brildryn?”
A blink. This close, her industrious perfume—iron, oil, smoke—was unmistakable.
He recognized her as the person who’d heckled him after he and Yeji and returned from meeting the Deep Ones. She hadn’t been a fan.
“Chief Mechanic.” He looks up. “Is that corporate speak for smithing?”
Her expression remained unchanged. “Mechanizing. Any boob can bash metal into shape.”
He wondered if she knew he’d been a blacksmith. “I didn’t know we had automatons.”
“We don’t.”
He looked at her.
She looked at him.
“So what’d you do, then?”
“Keep the heat flowing.” Her tone monotonous.
He placed her file to the side and leaned forward. “Listen: we’re on the same side here. I’m trying to keep Deephouse running. Keep us all in work. The more I know, the better job I can do for all of us.”
She held his gaze. “Permission to speak freely. Sir.”
Finally—he’d gotten through. “Of course.”
“This is a waste of my bloody time. I have projects that need tending and work that needs minding. It don’t stop just because the fancy city dwarf needs someone to hold his hand. Sir.”
The rebuke was given in the same flat register as everything else she’d said. That somehow made it worse, her tone suggesting she wasn’t sharing an opinion but a boring, universally understood fact.
The amulet on his chest was cold. Brildryn was not posturing. She truly believed what she’d said.
Durgin felt his cheeks burn but he restrained himself from responding to the insult. “I won’t keep you, then. Just one more thing—Sergeant Mountainfist. Did he ever give you cause to be angry with him?”
Something like humor passed across her eyes, there and gone. “Cause? All that dwarf did was piss me off. With his demands and his layabout manner and his breaking every damn thing in this place.”
She stood without waiting for dismissal; he’d said one more thing, she was holding him to it.
“Since you’re not gonna come right out and ask, I’ll tell you myself: I had nothing to do with it. But I’m glad he’s dead.” Her eyes burned briefly. She turned on her heel. She left the door open on her way out.
The amulet was silent.
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