Into the Traces

I knew that the partners would let me lurk and nurse my indignation only so long. After all, I might not have received an increase in pay, but I was now occupying one of the more valuable bits of real estate in town. And with the real estate came responsibilities.

At first came a couple of subtle invitations to start working. The mail slot, empty since my arrival in the office, started sprouting bits of paper. I responded by finding a book about origami that the Old Man must have picked up on his travels. Those heavy parchments with the big red seals make interesting variegated swans.

Next I noticed that the appointment calendar on the desk had been dusted off. Appointments started appearing in it whenever I wasn’t watching. It became a bit of a game, me trying to find new places to hide the darn thing – my invisible secretary finding it and adding dates that I would not keep. Finally I started sleeping on the book, and that stopped that.

Unfortunately my office door could be locked, but it couldn’t be barred. I only realized the partners had a key when I heard it turn. Ever opened the door and walked in, looking around with one of those patented “my feet are too good to touch the ground” elven sneers. I could feel my neck spines rising, and I returned his look with my best imitation of the Old Man’s leave-or-burn scowl.

Ever laughed, dusted off one of the visitor chairs, and sat down. Something in his laugh reminded me that he had survived partnership with both After and the Old Man. That, in turn, reminded me that he was one of the old breed of lawyer – the ones who had started in the profession when it was more about contests of arms than contests of statutory interpretation. Heck, the ones who had started in the profession when there was only one statute to interpret – and “Might makes Right” doesn’t require much scholarship to comprehend.

Bowing to the inevitable I coiled behind the desk, pulled one of the newfangled legal pads into reach and dipped my quill. It was my best imitation of dutiful junior associate, and, after a second or two’s silence, Ever actually clapped. Granted it was slow, and as sarcastic sounding as humanoid palms slapping could be, but it gave me a small perk to know that I hadn’t lost my touch.

The gentle art of sucking up is crucial to the life of any junior in a large firm. My performance had been a bit risky, but I’d judged the audience correctly. Happy would have thrown an axe or two, the Old man would have singed my spines, and though I couldn’t quite imagine what After would have done, I know I wouldn’t have enjoyed it. Ever, however, had a bit more of a sense of irony than the others did. At least, I’d hoped he did, and I seem to have been right. This time.

“I have a client for you,” momentary indulgence past, Ever cut straight to the point. “She will be here in an hour. It’s a family matter. She does not have a lot of money, but there’s potential for lots of referrals in the forest sector. You will make her happy. Or you will make me deeply unhappy. You do not want to do that.”

I wrote down, “one hour.” I wrote down, “family matter.” I sighed a small spark onto the desktop and watched the pad burn to crinkled ashes. “Sir, you know I articled in merchant law. I’ve even done some work on landlord/serf cases. All I know about family is what I studied for the Bar. Why me, sir?”

Ever snorted – a sound like breaking wind chimes – and replied. “No one likes family law. It is too chaotic and far too emotional. But someone has to handle this, and you’re it. Besides, if you’ve not done a case like this before, you may decide you like it.”

“I would suggest you spend the next hour tidying up,” Ever stood gracefully, “and if you have any time left over, the library is good for more than just books about paper folding.”

I looked around the room, trying to picture it through my grandmother’s eyes. Yes, I had been self-indulgently messy in the last few days. Nothing that couldn’t be cured by making piles of flammable and non-flammable, dealing with the former by turning it to ash and with the latter by shoveling it – and the ashes – into the dumb-waiter I had found and ringing the bell that took things down and away.

By the time I heard a knock on the door, the room was clean and the windows had been open long enough to air out most of the smoke. I’d even had time to polish the steel of my desktop, set out paper and quills, and start taking notes on the basic parts of a divorce action.

I opened the door and bowed my visitor in. ‘Visitor?’ the thought occurred to me with a mix of panic and pride; she wasn’t a ‘visitor’ she was my first client. Or… was that my first client and retinue. My client was a dryad, and she seemed to have brought every shrub spirit in the forest with her. Each shrub was heavily laden, and the dryad pointed them towards one side of the room where they began making piles, or heaps, of their load. It was only when one of the sacks broke as it was being set down that I realized they were full of paper. I spotted invoices, receipts and ledgers, before another sack was set down, obscuring the documents.

As the last shrub deposited its burden and left the room, my client turned to me, smiling broadly. I gestured her towards a chair, and sank gracelessly into my usual coil. I knew I had memorized a pretty speech to put her at her ease and welcome her to the firm. I knew it, but I didn’t know it at all. The sight of those documents, bags and bags of documents, had driven all coherent thought from my brain.

Fortunately my client needed no prompting to tap her life story. Equally fortunately my claws seemed to be able to take notes while my brain gibbered in a small dark corner paralyzed by the concept of having to deal with all that paper. I later figured out that she must be lonely living in the forest – at any rate she never required much in the way of what they called ‘active listening skills’ to believe I was hanging on her every word. Or perhaps it was just that if one spends most of ones’ life talking to trees, one ceases to expect much response.

Several brandies after her departure, I felt composed enough to read what I’d written. The dryad’s name was Spring Mulch, and she and her tree were 87 years old. Twenty of those years ago, she met – and fell in love with – a faun called Flash Hooves. They lived together, loved together, and spent spare time redecorating their part of the forest. Eight years ago, they had acquired a loan from on of the merchant banks, and used it to hire a mole team to dig them a pond.

Unfortunately it seemed that Flash didn’t quite grasp the concept of a loan. He seemed to think it was free money, and soon had second and third mortgages on the tree. Then Spring discovered that he was using the gold, not for home improvements, but for roistering evenings out with the bacchantes. Flash didn’t know that Spring’s dryad nature gave her the ability to identify other botanicals, but once her suspicions had been aroused, she quickly found the small grove of poppies, hemp and coca bushes. Flash tried rehab, but he was already well on his way to changing from faun to satyr. Finally, Spring gave him his walking papers, and, after setting up house with a maenad a couple of valleys south, he moved out.

This should have ended the story, but somewhere along the line Flash managed to remember that when they acquired the first loan, Spring had put his name on the title of the tree. They were joint tenants, and he figured that meant she owed him half her tree. He’d even brought in a dwarven appraiser to figure out the timber value.

The local magistrate was ready to hear Flash’s application to have the tree sold and the proceeds divided, on… I’d written the number large enough to take half the page, and there were enough circles and exclamation marks around it to fill a moltling’s first diary. I closed my eyes, but when I opened them, the number was still there. I tried looking at it one eye at a time, then squinting with both.

Strange… no matter what I did, the piece of paper kept on stating that I had only two days before the hearing. Two days to read all the papers. Two days to prepare my arguments. Two days to decide whether it might not be better to fly over the briars and join the royalty in sleeping away the centuries, ignorant of the world outside theirs.

Two days… I would start with the sacks of papers in the morning. Tonight, I would coil at the top of the tower and see how much stone draconic tears could melt.

To be Continued...