Frank's brass plate identified him as CUSTODIAL UNIT 14. It was twenty years old and still accurate in one sense: he was the fourteenth worker entered in the dungeon's original staffing ledger. The Core had called him Frank from his first hour. Payroll had continued calling him an asset. Until his first wage failed to arrive, he hadn't realized how much depended on the difference.
It had never mattered much while he was paying off the resurrection debt. Nobody sent wages to a bound worker. Now the debt was gone and somebody had to recognize the person doing the work, however much of that person happened to be made of bone.
It was not the first payroll problem he'd heard discussed at the staff table. A stoneworker had spent the previous lunch break reading the deductions aloud while two goblins argued over whether the fee for bedding included the bed. Frank had listened without joining in. The stoneworker had eventually asked him if he paid for anything he didn't use, and he'd replied that the list would be shorter if she asked what he did use.
The wage slip was addressed to UNIT 14, CURRENT STATUS UNKNOWN. Yesterday's maintenance credit had been assigned to an employee who wasn't on shift. Frank was still sorting out which office owned the errors when a combat skeleton stepped into the depot passage and lowered a halberd across it. The guard had no interest in wages; he wanted to know why a custodial unit was bringing vermin through restricted space.
The soldier stood half a skull taller than Frank and wore armor with the dents polished out as carefully as its metal allowed. He looked young in the way reanimated skeletons sometimes did, still convinced that every instruction handed down from command deserved to be repeated at full volume.
"He's registered," Frank said, showing the familiar certificate at a safe distance from the halberd. "We both have work orders along this passage."
The soldier peered at the certificate, which seemed to contain more writing than he had expected. "Your badge says Unit Fourteen. That's custodial. You can't just bring an animal through here."
"The new contract says I can. If your commander wants to see the registration, he can have a copy."
"We call your lot mop bones," the soldier said, perhaps thinking the term would settle the matter. His halberd still blocked the opening.
Frank had answered to Unit Fourteen for so long that he'd stopped hearing it as an insult. Now the same number might keep his wages from reaching him and the same classification might let a guard bar his way to work. He looked past the halberd at the supply depot he'd helped repair, and decided that if an argument was unavoidable he might as well make it an accurate one.
"What's your assignment number?" Frank asked. "If I'm going to report a blocked staff passage, I should get it right."
The soldier's jaw moved. He gave his squad designation, then an uncertain defensive rank. Frank let him search for the serial, probably stamped somewhere inside his cuirass.
"It's all right," Frank said at last. "I've got the location and the hour. If you want a proper check, ask command. I'm going to the depot."
The soldier shifted the halberd. As Frank passed, he warned him not to let the rat near the weapons.
"Then keep them where they belong," Frank said. He had spent yesterday collecting dropped screws, and he wasn't eager to see RB try the same trick with a sword.
Frank reached the depot late enough to find Moss arguing with the supply clerk over a shortage of grout. A pile of work orders sagged against her elbow, most stamped urgent by departments that seemed not to have checked the hour or the location. He waited until she'd finished counting the available bags before handing over his wage slip.
"They've got me down as an inactive unit," he said. "I can't collect wages if Payroll thinks I don't exist."
Moss took the paper without sitting. Her expression changed when she read the old designation. "I've got three workers in the same mess. All their contracts were converted and half their new identifiers are missing. One of them has rent due to the staff stores before the end of the week."
"Mine's been twenty years. You'd think they'd know where to find me."
"They know where to send your work orders," Moss said. "Personnel should've fixed this when you signed. Take your old contract and make them give you a receipt for whatever they change. Otherwise you'll be back there tomorrow with a new form and no wages."
Frank tucked the slip into the folder he used for disputed requisitions. He had never imagined having to prove that he existed while standing in a room where he'd repaired half the shelves, but the dungeon had a talent for making the ordinary difficult.
Pip worked behind a counter too high for her gargoyle stool. She was helping a goblin with a family allowance form when Frank arrived, and she made him wait until the worker knew which box he was signing. Frank recognized the expression on the goblin's face. He'd worn it himself yesterday, without the advantage of facial muscles.
"All right, Frank," she said, looking at his old plate. "Let's see what they've done to you."
She read the wage slip, found his voluntary contract in the ledger, and pressed her pencil against the margin. "There it is. You're listed as an inactive asset because somebody never issued the new identifier. The conversion is meant to happen automatically."
"Didn't this time."
"I can see that." She turned the book so he could read the disputed entry for himself. The Core's signature lay across the wrong box, generous and cheerful and absolutely useless for Payroll.
Pip rang for the Core with the weary care of somebody summoning a superior who enjoyed meetings more than decisions. Its face appeared over the counter, broad and delighted.
"Pip! Frank! Two of my favorite people, making things happen together. What a pleasure."
"You signed Frank's voluntary contract in the old contractor box," Pip said, holding the record up where the glass could see it. "That left him without an employee number. I need your authorization to correct the entry."
The Core brightened further. "Forms are a wonderful opportunity to keep improving our processes."
"We can improve this one by signing here." Pip marked the right box and kept her pen beside it, giving the Core no opening to change the subject.
"Frank's been with us so long," the Core said, "perhaps we ought to get him a retirement clock. Wouldn't that be a lovely celebration of loyalty?"
"I'd rather have my wages," Frank said.
Pip waited for the Core's signature to dry. The identifier was fixed; the wages still needed Moss's certification. She gave Frank two copies and kept one. "If Payroll tells you the account doesn't exist," she said, "bring them a copy. Do not begin with an argument about whether you exist."
The replacement plate bore FRANK in letters large enough for a rushed guard to read. Below it were his classification and an employee number. There was nothing handsome about the design. Frank ran a finger along the stamped name, checking whether the edges would catch his apron, and found he was reluctant to put it down.
RB emerged from beneath the counter carrying a bent paperclip. He placed it by Frank's boot and sniffed at the new tag. Pip looked down and smiled briefly.
"One of the few people who puts lost property back where I can find it," she said.
"He usually keeps it," Frank admitted. "We're working on that."
"I'd like a few employees to work on it too." Pip turned to the next person waiting, whose hand was already full of correspondence.
Moss fastened the new plate to his apron herself, with the same careful fingers she used when fixing a torn schedule to the depot noticeboard. She read the name once after she'd finished, as if checking that a clerk had really found room for it.
"Better," she said.
The plate was no prettier than the old one, but the wages would go to an account with his name on it. "You called me Frank anyway."
"I know. There are people in this building who've worked ten years under a number because nobody's thought to ask what they prefer."
"Get Pip to see them. She knows how to make a form behave."
Moss put the names of the other unpaid workers at the top of her stack of orders. He collected a storeroom door gasket and headed to his afternoon assignment.
At the supply-depot door, Bob was holding his orientation handbook upside down. He stopped Frank to ask why Frank's new badge carried a name when his own paperwork said TRAINEE. Frank showed him the employee classifications on the cover. Bob looked at the same line twice and asked whether TRAINEE was his name. "Bob," Frank said patiently. "Your name is Bob." Bob nodded, thanked him, and went back to Personnel with the handbook still upside down.
The mana-chilled storeroom had been losing cold air for a month. A young goblin sat outside with a wrench, a length of seal and two measurements that did not agree. The productivity chart beside him promised rewards for rapid repairs. The room had already been closed twice by workers eager to claim they'd finished it.
Frank turned the productivity chart over and used its blank side to show Ollo the door’s measurements. The boy kept glancing at the clock on the other side of the sheet. The room had been declared repaired twice already; Frank intended to show him why it still leaked.
"You Ollo?" he asked.
The goblin rose too quickly, striking the wrench against the wall. "Yes. Moss said to wait. I didn't want to touch anything until somebody checked my measurements."
"Good. Let me see them."
Ollo had measured the opening twice and written down two different numbers. Frank traced the difference to the lower hinge, which moved in its pocket when the heavy door closed. He put Ollo's hand on the frame while he worked the latch so the trainee could feel it for himself. The goblin looked more annoyed at the door than embarrassed at being wrong.
They cleaned the hinge pocket before fitting another strip. Ollo's fingers moved quickly, and he cut too soon twice, following the productivity chart's clock rather than the changing frame. Frank didn't take the knife away. He showed him how the door shifted when it closed and let him try the measurement again. By the time they found the real length, they'd lost the hour the chart said the whole job should have taken.
"Slow a little," Frank told him after the second piece had to be trimmed again. "Measure from the bottom where the frame stays square. The top moves when you pull the door."
"Moss marked it urgent," Ollo said, looking at the chart Frank had turned over.
"It is urgent. If we do it twice, we take twice as long and the room loses another day's cooling."
The goblin considered this and settled into the work. Afterward he admitted that the kitchens had sent him out of his last job because he argued too much about what counted as clean. Frank didn't ask whose version of clean had been right. He'd been around enough kitchens to know that the answer depended on whether somebody was looking at the floor or the schedule.
Ollo made the final cut himself and stood back while Frank closed the door, opened it again, and had him adjust the pin until the latch engaged without a shove. They left the door shut long enough to make sure the cooled air stayed inside the storeroom. A thin draft at the lower corner betrayed a twisted strip of seal; Ollo found it without being prompted and eased it back into the channel.
"I thought you'd do the whole thing," he admitted as he rolled up the scraps. "Most people would rather have me watching."
"You can watch once," Frank said. "Next time you'll be standing here alone with the wrong gasket and somebody asking when the room can reopen. Might as well learn what to look for."
The goblin squatted to collect the short offcuts and kept two of the cleanest pieces aside. When Frank asked why, he admitted he'd like to practice making the angle cuts before taking another job on his own. Frank showed him how to mark the waste length before trimming so he wouldn't use up a whole roll of stores material on practice. Ollo wrote the method on the back of his work order, careful not to smear the signature space with glue.
Ollo noticed RB on the cart as they gathered the tools. "Is that your familiar? What's RB stand for?"
The young goblin was having a hard enough first proper day without learning how frank descriptions became personnel complaints.
"It's his name," he said.
RB squeaked twice. Ollo smiled, uncertain whether the animal had answered him or agreed with Frank, and went to find Moss with the signed work order.
Sixteen XP came through after the storeroom reopened, taking Frank's available total to 458. His first wage still hadn't reached his account. He put the work credit beside Pip's new employee number, where he could see both without pretending they measured the same thing.
At the staff table, Ollo caught him on the way out and asked whether a trainee could request a different shift. Frank started explaining the rota form. Ollo shook his head. He wanted to know whether Moss would think him ungrateful for asking; the kitchen workers he used to eat with finished just as his new shift began. Frank nearly told him to eat with Maintenance instead, then realized that wasn't the point. "Ask her what she can do," he said. "You can like the job and still want supper with your friends." Ollo seemed relieved to have been understood.
That evening the viewing glass showed a party hauling an injured companion through a room Frank had patched the week before. They had made a stretcher from a cloak, which would have been sensible if the fighter carrying the front end had not kept stopping to argue about his share of the loot. The stretcher swung into a decorative pillar. Frank winced at the crack it left in the new plaster. "You could use the other side of the corridor," he told the glass. RB clicked from his box, and Frank marked the pillar for inspection. The adventurers eventually found the exit without his help.