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Yarver Bakema had spent enough time pacing. No amount of introspection was going to leave him better prepared for the interview, no amount of note-taking about what he absolutely had to ask. Nothing, he reminded himself, was strictly irreversible until it passed Psynateh's muster, and she had an instinct for what humans needed to painstakingly coax out of each other.
And yet, his role was important. If he made a mistake, it would almost surely spell doom for the applicant. The integrity of the Council was sacrosanct; if she disagreed with it, there was no letting her go. The risk of damage was too great. They would almost surely treat her cordially unless she turned violent, but rob her of her freedom regardless.
And so he had paced for a few hours, coming to terms with his role - until he had shed his anxieties like dead skin in a single dismissive gesture, found his centre, and let a casual air permeate through him, carrying both a friendly exterior and peace of mind.
He sat the reception desk of the Vale gym, one foot touching the ground, the other leg angled, slotting him into a loose sit. He had left the wrist watch he used to stop competitions at home, deliberately, knowing that he would otherwise constantly be checking the time until he drove himself mad with it.
He expected her to be extremely punctual, as the resume had promised, and he had no reason for doubt.
Adelaide Mawne, meanwhile, had seen the Vale gym before, so its appearance was not strictly a surprise.
Yet there was some absurdity in the idea that an interview for a position as a maid-cum-secretary (a butler, really, even if didn't say so on the tin) ultimately for a household not yet expressly named, that was palpably going to great lengths to weed out untrustworthy individuals, would go through such a proper establishment.
On the other hand, no one had ruled out that the Vale gym was where she would be working if she passed muster in the interview. She had already spoken to Yarver Bakema on the phone once, where he explained some of the subtext of the advertisement.
'Formally, I will be the one that would be writing your paychecks, Mrs. Mawne,' he had explained. 'However, your de-facto employer is in an ultimately very vulnerable position and thus prefers not to conduct the first-level interviews himself. Please don't hold that against him. Should you make it part the first-level interview, he will explain his concerns to you directly.'
It was to pay well. If she was being recruited into some kind of mafia, this secrecy then almost made sense, except that Yarver Bakema's flawless reputation, exemplary conduct and moral judgement utterly ruled out any criminal organisation.
In either case, she was here now, and perhaps he might volunteer some more information in the interview itself.
She'd spent some time entertaining herself with thoughts of who her mysterious potential employer could be. The Vale gym was, of course an option; she wasn't sure why the high level of secrecy, but according to the rumour mill Yarver Bakema was the de-facto leader of Sehto's gym leaders. Perhaps it was something related to that? Surely there was some degree of coordination between the regions, and with it some form of sensitive information.
What he'd offered in the phone interview didn't quite fit with that, however. Yarver had indicated she'd be working primarily for another, and her previous experiences were primarily acting as personal assistant to a recently retired businessman, so it seemed likely she was being hired for something of that ilk. Plausibly a friend of Yarver, who did not trust themselves to vet a new employee, and had chosen to ask the local most familiar with identifying shady characters.
She'd certainly met her fair share in her brief dalliance with circuiting, before deciding that most of the “professional trainers” she'd met were various flavours of crazy and she needed to leave before it became infectous.
Still, Yarver had indicated that familiarity with both travel and pokemon was a benefit for this position. Presumably there would be some travel between cities - another reason the mystery employer could have recruited a gym leader as middle man - and that made pokemon of your own a necessity. Hungry wild pokemon were dangerous. Criminals were irritating to extremely dangerous. Mountains were mostly inconvenient. All could be circumvented by pokemon.
It wasn't polite though to bring pokemon to an interview, even one with a gym leader, so hers were neatly tucked away in her bag when she stepped in the door.
It took the opened door for Yarver to realise he should cut this short. He had seen this one before. There weren't so many circuiters in Sehto that he couldn't memorise their faces. Names, on the other hand, had gone right out of habit - they were always exchanged, but not necessarily real, and so he had rarely bothered to commit them to memory.
It was no big deal. If anything, it was a relief to have such a simple reason to send her away again. He would have a polite, friendly conversation with her, ultimately dismiss her with a comment on how they would think about it, as was entirely customary in interviews of any kind, and then send her a polite letter of rejection.
It took all the tension out of their meeting. It was a blessing.
And yet, a different part of him insisted he assess her purely on her merits, and it came from a mental module that knew how to fight its way to dominance.
He considered the option, tried to grasp at what he knew about her - had she gone up to Taqnateh? If she had, she'd declined Jagdish's deal. Did he not perhaps have a moral obligation to deliver her to Jagdish anyway? Declining the deal was a cheap way to skirt accountability, after all, even if those that did knew nothing of what it was they were opting out of.
And yet, he was not Arbiter. Jagdish was, for good reason. A lifelong incarceration was not for him to decide, especially under some shady guise of employment. No, his obligation was in determining whether she was a good candidate as Jagdish's assistant. It was his sworn duty to take the question seriously.
Then the instant of competing thoughts was over and he slipped down the reception desk, smiling cordially toward his guest, thrusting out a hand toward her as he approached at a casual pace. “Mrs. Mawne, I presume? Welcome,” he said, his tone warm. “I'm Yarver Bakema, we spoke on the phone - and I do believe we've met before, if only briefly. You've been on the circuit?”
“Miss, please,” Adelaide offered with a smile and a firm handshake. “Thank you for having me, Mr Bakema. And yes, although admittedly I only completed part of it.” She paused briefly to think of a diplomatic phrasing, something less objectional than telling him some of his colleagues were extremely offputting. “I found it not to my taste. Is that likely be to a problem?”
She hoped not. She didn't think he was one of the gym leaders that scowled at anyone who couldn't meet their standards, but… well, he was still a gym leader. A 'failed' trainer might well fall into an entirely different category than someone who kept pokemon purely as pets or to assist them in their occupation.
“Miss Mawne,” Yarver corrected himself, apologetically, then smiled as he answered her question: “Quite the contrary. You surely know how circuiters can be and often are - it commends you that you distance yourself from the practise.
“The kind of manner that the majority of circuiters tend to carry themselves with simply does not readily lend itself to being a good personal assistant, so I'm surprised, but pleasantly so.” The subtext was not subtle, but it managed to have an encouraging flavour: Here you are, ready to prove me wrong.
He gestured for her to follow, leading her down the corridor into the dark hall of the arena. The flick of a switch brought light to the place, revealing the broad-stepped giant's staircase she remembered from her time circuiting, along with its artificial burrowing holes, a whole labyrinthine interior hidden from view.
Yarver sat down on the lowest 'stair', gesturing for her to join him. The two humans seemed tiny in the vast, empty hall, perfectly inconsequential.
“If you don't mind my interest, what did initially inspire you to try the circuit?” It was a question best not asked, but it was going to distract him constantly if he wouldn't get it out of his system.
She wasn't sure if his comment on circuiters was a friendly commiseration or a pointed commentary. She'd address it if it became necessary. Hopefully it wouldn't. It DID feel slightly odd that he was leading her to the battle area, and she sincerely hoped Yarver wasn't intending to challenge her to a battle to prove her worth. If he was, she had a list of arguments why it was pointless, beginning with 'If this job requires tasks that can only be done by pokemon why are you hiring me, YOU'RE the pokemon expert'.
Sitting down was not how challenges went. Generally. Gym leaders were very good at new and unusually tricky ways of battling, but it was still a promising sign.
“I worked for a time on the S.S. Anne,” Adelaide answered, smoothing her jacket down under her as she sat. “It's an oddity not to have pokemon on board, and we were forever suggesting trainers not hold battles in their cabins. Very few of the customers had ever been to Sehto, however, and they were endlessly fascinated by our island and asking me about the gym circuit and telling wonderful stories about their own experiences doing their local circuits.” She grimaced slightly at the memory. “Which, with the benefit of hindsight, I now know were exaggerated. But at the time I let them convince me to try it during my furlough.”
It took every ounce of self-control not to blurt out “My condolences,” purely on conversational instinct. That was perhaps a little more blunt about the matter than he wanted to be.
“A nautical background,” Yarver observed, although with any surprise - her resume had mentioned her role on the cruiser, since it was at least slightly relevant to the position that she'd had a variety of service backgrounds. “It sounds rife with potential for adventure. What made you switch from the multi-client service world to personal assistance?”
“Mostly the clients themselves,” Adelaide said, self depreciatingly. “It was a good experience and I'm grateful for it, but it was also long hours and repetitive duties, and there's only so many times you can mop out a cabin before you crave something with a little more challenge. It was the connections I made there that led me to my previous job.”
Which was, on paper, much more mundane. Several years working as assistant to the owner of an tourist business, until he decided to retire and pass the reins to his daughter and her husband. It had left Adelaide in a good position, though, so if Yarver's mysterious offer of mysteriousness didn't pan out she had time to keep searching.
“Tell me a little about that one?” Yarver gently prompted, evidently content to let her narrate her life story for now. No doubt hard questions lay in wait, but the emphasis was on in wait - probing questions on discretion, references, familial ties, religious convictions, ethical and political stances, and other matters only sufficiently paranoid clients would think to ask.
And if one thing was clear about her prospective employer, it was their paranoia. She was ready to field questions that weren't quite polite to ask, even if there was technically no law against asking them. Or much of any law, purely formally speaking, given Sehto's striking decentralisation.
“First secretary then personal assistant to the owner of an import-export business operating out of Ehqaj. Which is still going strong,” Adelaide commented, because she was sure Yarver would have looked into that himself, “but Mr Jesque has retired and handed the reins over to her eldest daughter. And her husband fills the same role for her that I did for Mr Jesque, so my position was no longer required.” A regretable circumstance for her, but it had been a very smooth transition and she'd still consider them friendly contacts. And, more relevantly, providers of excellent references.
“The perils of a family business,” Yarver smiled. “Would you mind telling me a little about your day-to-day work with Mr Jesque?” Again, in the rough, this was all in her resume, but it was customary to ask about it anyway - there were intonations, nuances and details in a summary delivered in person that were entirely absent on paper.
She nodded and reached into her bag. “I can do that. But if you're wanting a more detailed summary of my previous duties, I've brought copies of a regrettable amount of paperwork.” A cardboard folder was withdrawn and spread open on the step between them. “I wasn't sure what sort of information the prospective employer would need so I tried to be thorough. It's possibly too much; you're welcome to keep as much or as little as you like,” Adelaide said with a depreciating smile.
Quickly she separated it out, showing Yarver the colour coded tabs for different types of information, and the simple shorthand she'd added in a few margins to clarify a sentence had been about before any personal or sensitive details had been redacted with thick stripes of black ink.
The paperwork came as a surprise. The surprise gradually revealed itself to be of the pleasant sort as he let her take him through a quick walkthrough of her system. He let it flower into his body language, radiating appreciation. Her organisational skills were definitely exemplary.
He allowed himself several minutes to simply page through the documentation, reading excerpts at his leisure, trying to find a slip-up of confidential information or any inconsistency, not so much to hang her with but to simply temper his unwelcome enthusiasm.
The samples revealed nothing, leaving him with his bothersome yearning for someone with such meticulousness. It should be a warning sign, he reasoned, at least in isolation. Meticulousness was great, of course, but only as long as it wasn't used to document your crimes in detail.
“I see you've blacked out quite a few personal details,” Yarver observed. “Would you be willing to elaborate on some of them off the record?” How seriously do you take your confidentiality?
✘ IN PROGRESS