When the goblin first announced that he intended to open a tavern, Bernard supported the idea without a moment's hesitation. By then, the old dwarven waystation looked considerably better than it had on the day the goblin found it. The hearth drew smoke in the correct direction, the counter stood upright again, and most of the things living beneath the floorboards had either been removed or persuaded to stop biting ankles. There were no customers yet, but a jug of mushroom beer already occupied one of the tables, and Bernard had begun occupying the chair beside it with suspicious regularity.
"You sshould open already."
The tall man in the worn old coat said it after finishing a particularly good tankard. The goblin looked around the empty room, then back at Bernard.
"That is exactly what I intend to do."
"Good."
"Vlado says I need a permit."
Bernard stopped reaching for the jug. It was only a brief pause, barely long enough to notice, but the goblin noticed it.
"Ah."
"That does not sound good."
"It iss not terrible."
That was not quite the same as saying it was good. Bernard finished his beer, set the empty tankard on the table and considered the matter for a moment.
"You will need patience."
It turned out that the dwarves had left behind considerably more than mines, bridges and halls beneath the mountain. They had left vaults full of treasure, roads running in every possible direction and enough stonework to make several human kings feel inadequate. They had also left behind a bureaucracy.
For centuries, the dwarven kingdom had recorded almost everything that moved through it. There were registers for merchants, cargo, wagons, livestock, mines, inns, wells, warehouses and chimneys. Every permit required a seal, every seal belonged in a register, and every register had several copies stored somewhere safe enough that, after the kingdom fell, no one could find them.
When the dwarves fled, the archives remained. Then the vampires arrived, and it turned out that very few things could stir enthusiasm in an undead heart quite like a cabinet full of forms. Neatly stacked paper, sharpened quills, fresh ink and shelves of records stretching back several centuries proved irresistible.
The vampires fell in love with administration. What the dwarves had created to keep a vast underground kingdom functioning, the vampires improved upon with the sort of dedication usually reserved for religion. They introduced new forms, new registers and entire departments whose principal responsibility was checking the work of other departments.
The old administrative halls expanded accordingly. Offices became corridors, corridors led to waiting rooms, waiting rooms led to archives, and the archives usually led to more offices. During the same period, several outer districts were lost to trolls, undead and creatures nobody had yet managed to classify. The Office of Commercial Permits remained fully operational.
The goblin discovered this on his first morning. To open a tavern, he first needed permission to operate a commercial establishment. To obtain that permission, he needed a certificate declaring the premises suitable, and the certificate required evidence of a safe hearth, potable water, appropriate food storage and several other things which had apparently become matters of great concern since the fall of civilisation.
Mushroom beer, naturally, required its own form. The goblin filled it in and received it back two days later. Under the box marked Type of Beverage, he had written mushroom beer. The correct answer was fermented mushroom beverage.
He filled it in again. This time it was returned because he had neglected to specify the species of mushroom.
That evening, the goblin dropped a stack of papers nearly a foot high onto the table in front of Bernard. Bernard looked through the forms, then glanced at the jug beside them.
"If you want, I know ssomeone in the Beverage Regisstry."
"Why do you know someone in the Beverage Registry?"
Bernard poured himself another beer and appeared to give the question serious thought.
"I know many people."
The application was approved the following morning. The goblin decided not to ask.
Bernard continued to be helpful in small, carefully unremarkable ways. When the goblin needed a signature from the warden of the western road, Bernard knew which door to knock on. When an official insisted that the old waystation had no building number, Bernard happened to remember the number it had possessed several centuries earlier. When a form disappeared somewhere between the third and fourth archives, Bernard suggested asking for it again. It was found before lunch.
Bernard never filled in a form, signed a document or explained how he knew any of these things. He merely drank the goblin's beer and occasionally pointed him in the correct direction. The goblin had started to suspect that there was considerably more to Bernard than an old coat, an enormous coin pouch and an unreasonable reluctance to pay for drinks, but he considered it polite not to investigate the matter too closely.
After several weeks, only one document remained: the permit to open the tavern itself. Unlike the others, it could not be signed by an ordinary official. For reasons buried somewhere deep within dwarven law and lovingly preserved by the vampires, a new tavern required the personal approval of the ruler of the Dungeon.
And so the goblin went to see Vlado. The vampire occupied one of the old dwarven administrative buildings, although over the years it had acquired several towers, a collection of crypts, two dungeons and so many additional offices that nobody could say with confidence where the original building ended.
The goblin waited outside Vlado's office for almost two hours. During that entire time, no one entered and no one left. Eventually, the door opened.
Vlado sat behind a long desk covered with books, scrolls and neatly arranged stacks of documents. The shelves behind him contained more of the same. There was very little in the room to suggest that its owner ruled a Dungeon, but a great deal to suggest that he intended to audit one.
The goblin placed his application on the desk. Vlado read it slowly, turned it over, read the back and then began working through the attachments.
"Maximum occupancy?"
The goblin produced a document.
"Fire safety?"
He produced another.
"Beverage registration?"
A third document joined the pile. Vlado continued until the stack between them grew high enough that the goblin could barely see the vampire on the other side. At last, after going through the entire file once more, Vlado folded his hands on the desk.
"Almost everything is in order."
The goblin disliked the word almost immediately.
"Almost?"
Vlado removed a single sheet from the file.
"You are missing a certificate authorising you to operate an establishment providing hospitality services."
"Is that not what I am applying for?"
"No."
"Where do I get it?"
Vlado pointed to the name of a department printed at the bottom of the page. The goblin took the form and left without another word.
Three days later, he returned to the waystation and placed the same form in front of Bernard. Bernard read the department name, read it again, then took a long drink.
"That department doess not exisst."
"Vlado sent me there."
"That ssoundss like Vlado."
"Was it abolished?"
Bernard shook his head and pushed the paper back across the table.
"Dwarvess."
"The dwarven kingdom fell centuries ago."
"Which iss why nobody iss there."
The following morning Bernard left the waystation unusually early. He did not say where he was going, and by then the goblin had learned that questions concerning Bernard were often more useful when left unasked. When Bernard returned that evening, he merely suggested that the goblin visit Vlado again the next day.
This time the goblin waited only an hour. Vlado went through the entire application once again, but when he reached the missing certificate, he paused for several seconds.
"I will grant an exemption."
"Why?"
Vlado looked at the offending form as though its failure to exist was a personal disappointment.
"The relevant department is currently unable to issue the document."
It was perhaps the harshest criticism of his own administration Vlado had ever made. The vampire took out a long sheet of parchment and carefully wrote down the goblin's name, the location of the premises and the activity he was permitted to conduct there. When he was finished, he melted red wax onto the bottom of the document and pressed his seal into it, leaving a large V in the wax.
After weeks of offices, queues, signatures and forms, the goblin finally held permission to open one small tavern in the middle of the Dungeon. Bernard was already waiting at the bar when he returned.
"I have it."
The goblin unrolled the parchment in front of him. Bernard examined the seal with what appeared to be mild interest.
"Lookss official."
"Vlado gave me an exemption."
"Did he?"
The goblin watched him for a moment. Bernard drank his beer with the calm concentration of a man who had absolutely nothing to hide.
"You would not know anything about that?"
"About what?"
The goblin continued staring for another moment, then rolled up the permit and hung it on the wall behind the bar. Bernard waited until it was straight before lifting his empty tankard.
"Doess thiss mean you are open?"
The goblin looked at Vlado's red seal, then at Bernard.
"Officially."
Bernard slid the tankard across the counter.
"Excellent. Pour me another."
