The Retired Abyss Innkeeper-Chapter 48: He Was Very Reasonable About the Sewers. The Room Was Not

Chapter 48: He Was Very Reasonable About the Sewers. The Room Was Not

The room was still looking at him.

He was light green, had pointy ears and came up to about my hip. Hard to miss once you noticed him.

The coat helped.

Someone had made it specifically for him. You could tell. It had the sort of tailoring that came from a person with very strong opinions about how a coat ought to sit on a body. In this case those opinions had been correct down to the last seam.

He still had one hand on my sleeve. His expression was settled. He was looking up at me.

His two associates hadn’t moved. Still at table two. still writing.

"Is that a creature," one of the council members said.

A little too loud. And once it was out there, there wasn’t really a take-back. The man beside him leaned away from the table.

"It’s been sitting there all morning?" someone from the guild bench said.

"I didn’t see it," the first council member said.

"It was right there."

"I didn’t see it," he said again.

Louder. That didn’t improve his position.

The small guest looked at them both.

He didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t change his expression.

"My apologies for the wait," I said to him. "It has been a morning."

"It has," he said. "I found it informative."

I glanced over at the council member who’d spoken earlier. He was studying the table with a great deal of concentration.

"He’s a guest," I said. "He’s been at table two since before any of you arrived. I moved him to the table myself when he came in."

I looked down at my board.

"I should have introduced him sooner," I added. "That’s on me."

The council member shyly nodded. He was still looking at the table.

"Torvel," he said to me. "The Sixfold Exchange. We operate across several dimensions including this one, as of about a few weeks ago."

"Aldous," I said. "The innkeeper. As of considerably longer than that."

I picked up the board.

"Are you eating? I’ve got stew now and broth later if you’ve got patience for it."

"Stew," he said. "Three portions."

He glanced over at his associates.

"They don’t stop."

"I’ll bring something over," I said. "People who don’t stop tend to forget they’re hungry. In my experience that doesn’t improve the work."

He looked at me for a moment. I couldn’t quite place the expression.

Then he nodded.

So I wrote it down.

"Now," he said. "About the matter of representation."

"Go ahead."

"The Sixfold Exchange identified this city’s dimensional positioning approximately four weeks ago," he said. "The position is significant."

He said it the way someone describes property location.

Very practical. Very factual.

"You are sitting at an intersection point," he continued. "Dimensions do not generally stack the way they have here. When they do, the access routes are usually buried in terrain that makes them impractical."

He paused briefly.

"In this case the routes are in your sewer system, which is less elegant but considerably more accessible."

He delivered that in the same tone. Simply a fact.

"We used the route in the eastern sewer channel," he continued. "Came through a dungeon dimension that’s now integrated into your lower infrastructure. Arrived three weeks ago to set up up preliminary operations."

I wrote sewer channel, eastern, dungeon dimension integrated, check drainage on the list.

The runoff had been going somewhere since the city floated, and I’d been wanting that documented before something crawled back up from the Abyss with opinions about the arrangement.

Now I knew where it went. That answered that.

So I kept listening.

"There’s a dungeon in the sewers?" the council chair said.

"Several," Torvel said. "The one in the eastern channel is the largest. The others are smaller."

He paused briefly.

"Two of them are largely decorative at this stage."

"Decorative," the guild representative said.

And then stopped with a click of his tongue.

"The city is sitting on a dimensional intersection," Vassara said.

Her tail moved once. Slowly.

"That is not something my house was informed of."

"Your house was not here when we surveyed," Torvel said in a business-like manner.

"I’m here now," she said.

"Yes," he said, "I’ve been watching."

Brenne quipped in, "A dungeon dimension integrated into civil infrastructure raises serious questions about the stability of—"

"It’s stable," Torvel said, "We checked."

"You checked," she said.

"Thoroughly. The Exchange does not operate out of unstable infrastructure."

He gave a small shrug.

"That would be bad for business."

"I’m not questioning your business practices," Brenne said, "I’m questioning whether a mortal city with active dungeon presence in its sewer system, floating in the Abyss, at an interdimensional intersection, is a situation that anyone has fully—"

"No," Kern said.

He was already standing. At some point he’d picked up his coat without me noticing.

"You have maps?" he said to Torvel.

"Preliminary surveys," Torvel said. "The Exchange is prepared to share relevant sections with the garrison in exchange for—"

"Later," Kern said.

He was already at the door.

The door opened. Then it closed.

The room looked at the space he’d been standing in for a moment.

The guild representative leaned forward. He looked at Torvel. Then at the door Kern had just walked through.

"The transit routes," he said. "If the city is accessible from multiple dimensions without surface transit requirements—"

"Significant commercial potential," Torvel said.

"The charter doesn’t cover interdimensional commerce," someone from the council bench said.

"The charter doesn’t cover any of this," the guild representative said.

"That is an ongoing point," the council chair said flatly.

Renner was writing. Lenne had her ledger open again.

Vassara looked at Torvel.

"The Exchange’s operations in this city," she said. "Where specifically."

"The eastern district at present," he said.

"My house’s territory," she said.

"Adjacent," he said.

She looked at him for a long moment.

"Torvel," she said. "We’ll speak later."

"I’ve already scheduled it," he said.

One of his associates turned a page without looking up.

"A dungeon integrated into drainage is not a resolved situation," Brenne was saying.

"The charter assigns this council authority over all infrastructure within city boundaries," the council chair said.

Two council members were sitting very still. Both of them were looking at the table. The guild representative had found a piece of paper and was writing numbers on it.

I needed to get to the kitchen.

"I’m going to start the third loaf," I said to the room.

The room continued.

"Brenne," I said, a little louder. "Third loaf. Whenever you’re ready."

"In a minute," she said, without turning around.

"The intersection changes the scope of what this situation is," Brenne said.

"The scope of what this situation is," Vassara said, "is my house’s territory."

Neither of them looked like they were stopping anytime soon.

Fair enough.

I added check east sewer channel, confirm drainage resolution, note dungeon integration for maintenance purposes to the list.

I noted Torvel under current guests. Sixfold Exchange. Common room. Three portions stew. Associates at table two. Ongoing.

I noted the second floor would open soon. The count was going to keep moving until it did.

Then I went to start the bread. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

Behind me the common room was louder than it had been when I came in that morning.

The bread needed flour and time. It didn’t care about any of the rest of it.

[SYSTEM LOG]

Guest identification resolved. Torvel. Sixfold Exchange, advance representative. Active. Table two, common room.

Dungeon dimension, eastern sewer channel: confirmed integrated. Additional minor instances logged. Infrastructure status noted as stable per subject’s report. Verification pending.

Dimensional intersection, city-current position: confirmed. Access routes identified and partially surveyed by external party prior to inn’s classification update. Form pending.

Kern: departed premises. Destination unconfirmed.