For all I’d heard about these Overseers, I’d not actually seen them. That was about to change.

  I went through what I knew about the men as we trudged over to wherever they were, and was more than a little disheartened by the knowledge that it really wasn’t all that much either. If knowledge was power, I was stuck here using hand-cranks while everybody else operated on coal and steam.

  Granted, there’s really only so much you can expect to gain from knowledge when you’re being hauled off to explain why a city is about to get raided by flying magical monsters.

  We reached our destination just in time for me to not shit myself, with Gruin, naturally, looking about as bothered as he always did. We were being taken right out of the mining region of the city, and out of the city itself. I realised soon that we were headed for a larger structure positioned a further mile from Rogrid than we’d been working.

  Big place, that. Very big. It was made of hard stone and walled very carefully, of course. That was just what you did when building things far from the safety of a larger settlement—blackmist spawn always went for the isolated targets. I spotted a great many guards around the place as we neared, tucked away into various crannies along its stony surface and glaring down at us the way guards did.

  These weren’t city watch, looked more like private hands. Mercenaries perhaps, or else miners who’d earned enough favour to get paid swinging cudgels instead of pickaxes. It wasn’t unusual to me at all, my father had kept a small staff of personal thugs too and even had his near-superhuman butler head them when necessary. The scale, though, was intimidating. Here was a collection of bodies big enough to exhaust my family’s income on their upkeep.

  And I was about to get yelled at by their bosses.

  Just the one boss, as it turned out, but plenty of yelling. Enough yelling that it started before either myself or Gruin was even through the door, and continued for about a minute straight without so much as a pause for air. It was actually impressive.

  The yeller in question was an older man, maybe my father’s age. He was one of the fatter living things I’d ever seen, about half a foot shorter than me but probably twice my weight. His face was beet red as he screamed, flecks of spittle flying out by a kettle of rage that boiled so intensely I almost expected to see the spit hissing and popping into vapour mid-flight. Gruin glared, I remained stoic, and every one of the dozen or so men in the room had weapons hefted and ready as if they expected us to explode into violence.

  Well, in the case of Gruin I suppose that wasn’t such an unreasonable precaution.

  “Of all the inept, meddling imbeciles I have ever had in my mines, I have NEVER had a pair cause so much bloody chaos in so tiny a span of time! What do the two of you imbeciles have to say for yourselves!?”

  It took me a second to realise that this latest remark was actually spoken with the expectation of an answer, and a few seconds more to think of a suitable one. Clearly, this man was looking for someone to blame and had already decided it was me. That was about the worst position I could hope to be in. And I didn’t even realise the full truth of why at the time. Thing with being a miner, a drifter especially, is that you don’t get noticed easily, and can disappear without many eyebrows raised. If this Overseer felt especially pissed off, he could have Gruin and myself killed with one word and buried in some derelict shaft with another.

  This was probably the crux of his intimidation, too. He carried himself, I realise now, like a man who had already made his threat perfectly clear, who was banking on it. He looked incredibly surprised when I spoke on like I was staring down a beating rather than being killed, and Gruin looked even more so. The dull, bottomless naivety of a merchant’s son left me invulnerable to such subtle attempts at menacing. There’s something poetic there, that a man might turn into some dry observation about the world. Bah. I’ll leave that for the writers, I actually work for a living.

  “We are, of course, very sorry for any inconvenience we’ve caused…sir.” It actually bothered me to even call him that, if you can believe it. The Overseers were all the most powerful men in Rogrid, I knew that now, but they were still of the merchant’s class. Technically speaking, we were social equals.

  But of course they wouldn’t see it that way, and if I was still stupid enough to think I’d not be killed, I was not stupid enough to think I wouldn’t be beaten if I failed to play into this prick’s delusions of nobility.

  “Inconvenience,” the old man growled, “inconvenience!? You beat one of my men into unconsciousness and left the bloody mine exposed! Went venturing around inside it after we cordoned it off!”

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  I was actually clever enough to be confused there, because hearing the crimes said outloud I realised how insignificant they were compared to a personal meeting with the Overseer himself. Something wasn’t adding up here.

  “And…something else?” I guessed.

  If the man was impressed, he chanelled it into simply more incandescent rage and glared it right into my eyes with almost blinding intensity.

  “And got two of my other men…killed.” He lowered his voice as he said it, as if scared the words would escape this room.

  Now I was just more confused. For several reasons.

  “How did we…do that?”

  The man hit me. His fist was not a big one, nor was the arm that propelled it particularly quick or strong. Having taken quite an alarming amount of blows with wildly varying quality in the last few weeks, I was quite inured to the impact’s effects. I did play them up a bit though, no harm in making the old fuck feel more manly than he was if it meant the one deciding my fate ended up in a better mood.

  “By luring them down after you!” the Overseer roared, “two of those other idiots ran into the mines not ten minutes later and neither has been seen since.”

  I winced, actually feeling something at that. Not guilt though. As far as I was concerned that was just two idiots getting themselves killed for no reason, hardly my fault.

  “I am sorry about that sir,” I lied, “but if it’s any consolation my associate and I have vital information about the creature that’s actually been causing these problems.”

  That, it seemed, was the perfect thing to say. It diffused the Overseer’s temper near-instantly and seemed to change all his mindless rage into calm consideration.

  “What then?” He phrased it like a challenge, as if he thought I’d just be making this up to distract him. This was, obviously, an incredibly reasonable assumption, and probably the most likely outcome given what he knew, but it still bothered me.

  I looked to Gruin, and let him explain.

  Say what you will about the Grynkori, they have an almost magical way of compressing information. Within two minutes flat he’d conveyed just about everything that needed saying; what the creatures were, how dangerous they were, how to kill them, what they’d likely do next, how we’d discovered them, all of it.

  All of it.

  Unfortunately, all of it.

  “So the two of you idiots are the reason this swarm of monsters is going to erupt from the caves and attack my city!?” the Overseer snarled, practically foaming at the mouth as his eyes threatened to bulge clean out of their sockets. I spared exactly one moment to glare at Gruin before taking a step back and fighting the urge to move a hand for my sword. That motion, I suspected, would rather quickly escalate things into violence. With twenty men in the room it didn’t matter how good my weapon was or how skilled my technique, that violence would end in my death and it probably wouldn’t take even a minute to do so.

  But the men did not attack, and, miraculously, neither did Gruin. Things remained tense as the Grynkori kept speaking, but not deadly. Not yet.

  “No,” he replied, “that was always going to happen. Shygarin don’t live peacefully in an area once they’ve started nesting, they multiply, eat, then multiply some more. At worst, we’ve accelerated things by a few weeks while also bringing you warning of what would otherwise have come as a complete surprise.”

  The Overseer was not convinced of course, eyes narrowing openly and distrustingly.

  “How convenient then,” he growled, “that your little disaster has done so much hidden good. And all based on facts about these creatures that only you can verify. Were I a distrusting man I’m sure I would suspect it all to be some effort at covering yourself and keeping safe from the consequences of unleashing so many monsters upon the city.”

  “Call my a liar again and I’ll string you up by your own entrails ye nambly prick,” Gruin took a short step forwards right up until I put a hand down on his shoulder. Then another hand, then dug both heels in and still found myself unable to quite halt his forwards stride.

  The Overseer did not look scared, which was very much to his credit in my view. Maybe less so for the ever-growing mass of guards still flowing into the room. When he spoke though I found a great deal more caution meeting us than there had been before.

  “Say I believe you,” he growled, “and that is quite the ask, why the fuck should I not have you bloody lynched as a way of giving the men satisfaction? They’re near a state of catatonia with fear and rioting with panic.”

  Such things were novel to me. I knew the unwashed masses had a tendency for rowdiness and disorder, but I did not truly understand the depths of madness that scared humans could fall into. As always, my ignorance manifested as an incredibly undeserved composure. It probably helped that I still didn’t believe I’d actually be killed here.

  “Because having people who know what they’re doing will do a lot more to calm the others down long-term than one display of vengeance on a pair of scapegoats,” I pointed out. It actually was quite a good point, and I could see it sinking into the Overseer’s thick skull then and there.

  He took his sweet time in thinking about that, maybe deliberately, leaving us to wait and letting our tension mount on its own, or maybe just because his brain moved as slowly as most of this world’s idiots. Eventually, though, we got our answer. It was…a mixed blessing.

  “So that’s you volunteering then, is it, to help with this…outbreak?”

  Before I could reply, perhaps with a suitably weasely evasion that would’ve seen myself and Gruin sent out of Rogrid’s mines, out of the city proper and marching our way to safety, the Grynkori was already nodding.

  “Aye, for money.”

  Once more, the Overseer’s face became a thing of tight fury.

  “You want payment?”

  “Think of it as damage reduction,” I suggested. “How much harm exactly do you expect several hundred flying horrors to do come nightfall? Enough that the costs of repair are going to be far lower than the ten grains we’re asking each.”

  It was quite an absurd sum for such work, and I fully expected to be denied it. But I wasn’t. The Overseer thought more, then finally nodded.

  “Done. Welcome into my staff.”

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