The Unfair Folk (working title)

	Kelliset always had trouble sleeping on elven beds. The elves were always so concerned with softness and texture, but her own living feathers were better than the feathers in their finest feather beds, and when she was curled up to sleep, her feathers also shielded her from their finest drider silks. Accordingly, she'd rented a cheap room, where the bed might as well have been plain wood, and they'd piled on blankets of cheap silk to compensate. The blankets shaped properly around and under her as she curled up, while her feathers kept her warm.
	But she still couldn't sleep.
	Nirinet didn't have the same trouble, sleeping sprawled across Kelliset's pack like a miniature dragon atop a miniature hoard.
	Kelliset strapped on her leather footguards, slipped into a nightgown for the sake of elven sensibilities, wrapped the room key chain around her right hand, and left the room. With her talons lifted she was reasonably quiet on her footguards. She padded downstairs, having rented a room one floor(out of two) up from the ground. She avoided the common room as it was full of drunks at all hours. She made her way out to the plaza that served all the cheap inns as a back alley, and from there took flight.
	The wings on her back were enhanced by innate siren magic. Her wingspan was barely twice her height, but with a hop and a strong beat she was in the air, and she rose quickly to soar over the roofs. Buildings blurred together as she sought the lake.
	She swooped in to land on the shore. She hadn't been south to the islands since she was small, but it still felt like home, even if the lake was hardly an ocean and the spring night was chill. The moon was nearly full, casting a bright reflection out across the lake. Kelliset took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. Here was the relaxation she needed. While a cheap inn had better bedding for her, perhaps next time she should stay in one of the ones by the lake.
	Then a piece of moonlight moved of its own accord.
	Separating from the bulk of the reflected moonlight, the glowing transparent form of an elven man went through motions on the surface of the lake. Most would've been scared to encounter the undead. Kelliset first weighed him as a tactical threat, found him wanting, and then puzzled over what he might want. A series of visits around the edge of the lake, growing increasingly agitated and anguished, then heading mournfully for the center, only to vanish into the moonlight… Left alone now, she frowned. The lake must freeze over in the winter, and the ghost must've just reenacted a suicide. The distress was clear, but what to do for him decidedly unclear…
	A sharp cry pierced the chill air. Kelliset scanned the night sky and picked out Nirinet's sinuous form with an owl's vision, then held out her right arm for the storm serpent to land. Nirinet perched there in an abrupt flutter of feathers and scales, and then quiet.
	Kelliset idly scritched the large scales of Nirinet's head, and barely broke the silence in her native tongue. "A ghost haunts here, probably a suicide. Uncertain how to help."
	Nirinet cocked her head to study the siren, without moving enough to break the scritches. "You don't have to solve every problem you find. Wait for someone to hire you to help, and they'll tell you more pieces of the puzzle." The arcane bond between them lent the companion impeccable speech in her master's native accent.
	"Shouldn't we help when we see a person in distress?"
	"Perhaps. But that doesn't include their undead echo."
	The elf himself was long gone, but… "I don't think I agree. His anguish remains, reenacted by his ghost."
	"His anguish can't be fixed. Only his ghost can." It was an old disagreement between them, at heart. If an ill remained ill when its victims were gone, then what if its record had been closed out, or erased?
	Kelliset's left hand came up reflexively as she yawned. The puzzle, even unsolved, but returned to the comfortable old ground of the disagreement, was just what she'd needed. "Whether or not that's true, I'm ready to try sleep again…"
	Without another word, Nirinet leapt into the sky, and the two flew back to the cheap inn in a comfortable silence. Perhaps someone someday would hire her to help.

		★	★	★

	"You'll each be paid a retainer of eighty silver a day, and a flat two thousand when the job is complete." Kelliset nodded for the hundredth time, and the little hobgoblin checked off another confirmation with an enchanted quill.
	You know you're dealing with nobles when minor magic items abound, but they insist on paying in silver. Or copper, she could probably take her pay in copper if she asked, but the hobgoblin clerk wouldn't dare insult her by offering.
	"An agent of milord will return to market every wednesday. You can send coin with, for them to purchase things for you, or you can take an unpaid holiday to go with and purchase things for yourself." Another nod, another check. Standard when hired for semi-remote action.
	"Lodgings and simple food are provided in addition, but more respectable fare will bear a charge." Another nod, another check, even though this was another trap. Kelliset would be classifying herself by how she ate. She planned to pay for noble fare for the first week or so, then eat with the servants more and more, then only the occasional noble meal as a treat, since that would be most uncomfortable for their employer to leverage against them. Guilders to farthings, after a few weeks he'd make a habit of inviting the mercenaries to dine with him, so he could have a meal with neither verbal fencing nor silence.
	"Workplace romances are frowned upon." At this she skewered the clerk with a baleful gaze, almost feline, until he looked ready to skitter under the rug to escape her, then she nodded. He nevertheless crossed that one out, and the next few as well. She hadn't the slightest intention of making more than fire-forged friends with the other mercenaries, but allowing her employer such restrictions was opening a gate to incessant meddling in her personal life, but it was nevertheless uncouth to refuse. This way, she was technically agreeing, but disdaining the rule as so uncouth her employer daren't stain his hands with such concerns. What followed was usually a list of her employer's relatives she was forbidden to lie with, a bond of silence(particularly against his wife) on the off chance she should lie with her employer, an injunction against leaving the help pregnant, that sort of thing.
	"Do not indulge in drunken hooliganism within the manor —"
	"— Certainly not without close air support!!!" A burly biped of some wolven persuasion burst in with a slam of the door, after thundering this last. He clearly hadn't intended on blundering into another mercenary's interview, as he had just done, but to his credit he promptly regained his aplomb and gently applied a bit of charm. "…Well. Aurik, champion of Chaos." He bowed with a grace belied by his masculinity and bulk. "And you would be…?"
	"Kelliset, the close air support." She gave a sweeping bow, nigh foppish, by tucking her wings forwards along her arms like a cloak.
	"Well that changes things." Without another word he turned to bluster back through the door, bellowing "I accept!" before slamming it closed behind him.
	She turned a calculated grin of mild wry amusement upon the clerk. He was awaiting anxiously to see if she'd react negatively to this, and perhaps he'd lose her because of a mercenary not worth hiring, but she knew well the personality it takes to charge headlong into battle, trusting in the healer and the close air support.
	"Ah… Do not engage in drunken hooliganism within the manor, nor within the farms, but a drinking hall will be provided for such activities." Another nod, another check. Clearly their employer, or some manager below the young baron but above this clerk, knew full well the personality it takes. Kelliset had no intention of drinking, hooliganism, nor of patronizing such a drinking hall. Doubtless plenty of farmers would be as happy to party with Aurik, champion of Chaos during off hours as Kelliset was on the job.

		★	★	★

	A single wagon was provided for all the mercenaries, to all be picked up at once, but it was nevertheless unsurprisingly late. Kelliset had arrived half an hour early, but the others trickled in over the last few minutes, and yet everyone brought something to entertain themself while waiting for the wagon. Kelliset herself was enchanting arrows with minor banes.
	The little grey kobold wizard — of the Sky Robe, no less — had some cat's cradle of magic sprawled across a seat large enough for any of them, doubtless developing a new Sky spell.
	Aurik had brought knitting, which would also work on the wagon, but at Kelliset's glance he explained how it wasn't worth it to ask the healer to mend clothes as well as heal his wounds. As Sky magic is well suited to healing, this brought appreciative nods from the kobold and an actual introduction, Gerro. Grey kobolds are uniformly cute, but names in the kobold tongue are modified for three genders, so she didn't have to ask his pronouns.
	Last to arrive was a deertaur bearing a large parasol of pure shadow matter, a very-bigender nightmare soldier named Liathi. Sure enough, they spoke the elvish tongue without any accent Kelliset could detect, and doubtless had grown up among the elves, not their own people. They'd brought a book, an elvish free verse epic about the Alignment Wars, doubtless extremely biased. Kelliset wondered whether Liathi bought into the elvish bullshit, or they were impartially consuming all sides, but such a question hewed too close to discussing politics with coworkers she barely knew.
	Despite introducing Nirinet as her arcane companion each time, and the storm serpent giving a graceful bow each time, none of them shared a language with her, so her talent for nigh-feline commentary was of no help in breaking the ice.