“You want to eat, you gotta work. Say you can’t work, and you’re saying all you’re good for is this month’s Kindling. So step up if you’ve done the work, and you can have some food, or stay back and you’ll be food for the fires.”

– Quartermaster Joro Dunn as a cover while he secretly distributed foodpacks to the bedridden members of the Blackened Rose Commons. 

Workdays are all the same, and every day is a workday. For people like me, the day started with the First Brightening, when the beacon from the Eternal Lord’s palace was raised to the first notch of brightness. That was the sign that we needed to get up and get to the nearest recruitment point.

Normally, I’d stumble along in the middle of the pack of people from whatever Nest I’d flopped down in for the night. If I could manage to wiggle to a spot at the front of the crowd, there was a better chance I’d be picked for something with a decent daily food allotment. More often than not though, I was left at the back and got to make do with the work no one else wanted.

That was how normal days went. This time I rode to the recruitment point on Goptrop Oolgoo’s shoulders. Goptrop was the Bugbear who’d been sleeping nearest to me. Goptrop had Smiles, the other Ratkin who’d been nearby on his other shoulder. We’d each tried to decline his offer, but Goptrop had been clear that we were all in this together and that meant nobody was going to get stepped on. As a tall guy, it was his duty to make sure of that, or so he’d said.

I could have fought more, refused the ‘kindness’ since it was definitely going to put me in a position where people noticed me. I could have, but that would have made me stand out even more than accepting the offer like Smiles had.

The Nest I’d stumbled into turned out to be in West Pumps, or the Westside Water Pump and Filtration Precinct, which was good since I’d at least heard of the West Pumps. Mount Gloria is huge, and travel through it is limited to those who needed to move from precinct to precinct for work related reasons. Rich people could claim their work required them to be pretty much anywhere in the city, but there were plenty of places none of them ever visited. People like me were more widely traveled, but that was rarely of our own volition.

“How many Firsts did they have yesterday?” Smiles asked. ‘Firsts’ being the jobs they were looking to fill before all the others, the ones they had to get people for, which in turn tended to pay the best.

“I think it was fifteen?” Groptop said. “Maybe twelve? It was low. So should be good for today.”

Looking at the crowd, I wagered that we had somewhere around a hundred people waiting for work orders, and of them there were a bit more than two dozen of us who’d been in Lucky’s Nest and were planning to present a united front. 

I didn’t like our odds. Even If Groptop was right and they had twice as many Firsts to fill, the chance that they’d need all of us for them was minimal.

An hour later though, when the Second Brightening provided us with enough light to see people more than a couple arms length away, I could feel the mood of the crowd had shifted a bit.

“Why are people moving back?” I asked, observing a subtle but definite retreat from the raised podium which was set up in the middle of the square where work was doled out.

“It’s Milgor,” Goptrop said, which explained precisely nothing to me, while also telling me all I needed to know.

I’d never met or heard of this “Milgor” but I’d run into so many people like him that I recognized him instantly from Groptop’s tone.

As the lanky young human man climbed up behind the podium, his story became painfully clear.

He was newly promoted to his position. He’d been following the former Work Administrator around for month, which was how Goptrop and Smiles knew him. From said predecessor, this Milgor had gotten the idea that his words needed to be law, and that nothing was more important than getting all of the jobs assigned to him completed that day, no matter how much time had been allotted for the work. In short, he was going to be absolutely miserable to work for because he had no idea how to do his job, the conviction that he needed to always be right, and lived in absolute terror that someone was going to notice he wasn’t really needed at all.

How did I know all this about Milgor?

You have to deal with precisely one Milgor to recognize the type when he reappears, and I’d dealt with hundreds of them.

True to form, Milgor mounted the podium looking harried and annoyed, which by Second Brightening would have been feat if that hadn’t been the state he was perpetually locked in.

“Quiet dogs!” He banged his hand on the podium to get our attention. That no one was looking anywhere else already had apparently escaped his notice. I would have taken offense since I was clearly a rat and not a dog, but the dogfolk I’ve known have been remarkably cool, so I couldn’t say I minded being confused for one, even if that wasn’t at all what was happening.

“Whatcha got for us today, Boss,” a human guy from another nest called out.

“Work. Just like always,” Milgor said. 

I wasn’t sure if they surgically removed the sense of humor from the Work Admins or if possessing a sense of humor was merely an immediate disqualification from the role. Milgor missed the collective eyeroll of the crowd and ruffled his papers before getting on with things.

“The Gloria Founding Festival is coming up. We’ve got street renewal and sewer work here, and piping replacement in High Press and Baker’s Row. Those are the priorities,” he said, peeling the top three sheets off his stack of papers and placing them on the podium.

“What about the farm pod? It should’ve been ready for harvest yesterday,” a halfling woman near the front called out.

“Farm work is suspended until further notice,” Milgor said.

“What? How are we going to have a festival with no food?” “We’ve got ten rows ready to go now, we don’t pick ‘em they’re just going to rot!” “I spent the last two dozen shifts working the pod. I deserve to be there when they get picked!”

The crowd was understandably unhappy with Milgor’s pronouncement. I wasn’t though. I was terrified.

“Farm work is suspended. Until further notice,” Milgor said. “A member of the Civil Patrol was assaulted yesterday and until the culprit is apprehended, no work on farming will be performed.”

“That’s crazy.” “Who did it?” “I didn’t hear about any patroller getting assaulted, where did it happen?” “Who’d hit a patroller? Nobody’s that stupid.” “What does farming have to do with a patroller getting punched?” “What are we supposed to do about it?”

Milgor clearly did not have the answers to those question, but I did.

That’s crazy? Yes. Yes it was.

Who did it? Well, me, obviously, and the moment anyone else got that answer I was as good as dead.

Where did it happen? Not in this precinct, so it might as well have been on the other side of the world.

Who’s stupid enough to hit a patroller? I am, clearly.

What does farming have to do with the patroller who was murdered not assaulted like the official report claimed? Absolutely nothing, except that it would make people desperate. 

What were they supposed to do about it? Find me and turn me in. That wasn’t going to happen, but I believed that largely because I was sure the crowd would simply grab someone they didn’t like and turn them in instead. Much easier than finding the real culprit and much safer too.

“We’ll take the street renewal and the pipe replacement,” Goptrop said, stepping forward with me and Smiles still on his shoulders. Some of the other people from Lucky’s nest fell in step behind him.

“You ain’t leaving the sewer work for us,” a goblin lady said from the front of the crowd.

“You’re right. We can take that too,” Goptrop said.

“How many are in your crew?” Milgor asked.

“Around eighty or so,” Goptrop said. I knew that was a lie but it didn’t sound like a lie.

“Crews are not allowed to be that big,” Milgor said, and his deputies shifted behind them. There were only six of them vs roughly a hundred of us, but they had weapons and armor and we had a desire to remain as uninjured as possible.

“It’s not,” Goprtrop said. “We’ve just got people who’ll work with us. No official leadership or crew ties here. Just thought we could make things more efficient for you so the work could start sooner.”

“How quickly will you be ready to start?” Milgor asked. He was exactly stupid enough to see the upside to himself and overlook the shift in power of allowing his workers to determine how work was done. It absolutely would be more efficient and make people a lot happier but it would also show how completely unnecessary he was.

“Now. We can start now,” Goptrop said and for a moment I was afraid that this Milgor might have two entire brain cells to rub together since it looked like he was actually considering the idea.

“Be about it then. Your work will be inspected at the end of the day, so make sure it’s flawless.” 

Milgors always said some variation of that. Usually, no one took it seriously. In this case though? No one took it seriously in this case either since this Milgor was nothing special. The only one who was concerned was probably me, and that was solely because Inspectors, if they actually showed up, were likely to be looking for more than work defects. In this case they would be looking for me and I had no idea how much they would have to go on in their search.

The crowd started to move before I could get too worried about that and I was legitimately shocked to see how many people moved with us. I’d been a little absorbed in my own thoughts on the ride over, but not enough to miss Goptrop organizing most of the workers who were present.

Looking around at the people from Lucky’s nest who were close to us though, I saw that I hadn’t missed anything. Goptrop wasn’t the one who’d been building bridges with the other work crews. It was the Kobold lady Sola had healed. And the kid who’d been freezing. And everyone. They’d spread out when we arrived. I thought they’d done that in order to be sure to catch the Milgor’s eye better but as we headed out they all came back together and shared a series of knowing nods.

When they said ‘we were in this together’, I’d assumed they’d meant the people at the nest. I knew what work crews were like, and while we were too big to qualify as one, it wasn’t unheard of for crews to work together until they got shifted apart or burned up.

There are more of them than there were last night, Sola said and I felt her warmth flowing out across the crowd, radiating not just from me to them but each of them to each other.

How? I asked. Most of these people never met us. They didn’t see what we did, and I haven’t heard anyone talking about it this morning either.

Because if they had they would have been dragged away and everyone knew it.

That’s how faith spreads, Sola said. It’s not from speaking of me, it’s from connecting with each other.