Brothers to Dragons Read Online Free PDF Page B

longer taught "useless and seditious" mathematics and science, so there was plenty of time for the government-approved "domestic sciences" of cooking and cleaning. After a few failed experiments, which the colonel seemed to consider amusing rather than annoying (though the children went without bread for a day or two when it happened), the level of competence rapidly increased. New bread, once an unknown luxury, soon began to be taken for granted.
    One Friday afternoon, Colonel della Porta found or imagined a smear on a sideboard that Job had polished. He declared that Job's attention needed to be sharpened, and ordered that his evening meal be withheld.
    Baking had just finished. The aroma of piping-hot loaves was percolating through every room of Cloak House. Job, ravenous and salivating, fled for escape to the roof. It was unnaturally warm for the end of November. He stayed on the rooftop for a long time, gazing out at the sprawl of the city, and only ventured down long after dinner was over.
    Cloak House was oddly quiet on the upper floors. All the usual sounds of active children with minimal discipline were absent. Laga was not in her dormitory with smuggled scraps of food for him, nor was anyone else to be found there. He kept going, and on the fifth floor found half a dozen children lying on the floor, or leaning against the cement walls. They did not reply when he spoke to them. He heard the sound of retching from the toilets, and looked inside. Every stall was occupied, and other kids were throwing up in the sinks and on the tiled floor. Five children lay in their own spew, facedown and unmoving.
    Job ran to the next floor. He found Laga there alone on the landing, feebly crawling towards the stairs.
    "Laga!" At his call she turned her head. She lifted herself to her knees, but as he moved to her side she fell forward again and started to vomit, near-dry heaves that dribbled something like a handful of dark coffee-grounds from her mouth. He lifted her so that she was facedown on his knees. As he did so her stomach muscles knotted with a great convulsion. She whimpered in agony.
    Stay with Laga, or try to get help? He was useless here. He laid her gently on the floor.
    "I'll be back, Laga, as soon as I can."
    She gave no sign of hearing. Job ran on down the stairs. Where were Colonel della Porta's assistants, the ones who were supposed to oversee Cloak House? And where was the colonel himself? Surely he must have heard the sounds from the floors above.
    Job came to the colonel's quarters and ran in without knocking, something he would not have dreamed of doing normally. The colonel was standing by the long sideboard, and he was shiny-faced and sweating. Job could smell him from twenty feet away.
    "Colonel, something awful's happening upstairs. Kids are real sick—some look dead."
    Delia Porta took no notice. Job realized that the colonel was clutching the telephone in one hand, and with the other was cramming handfuls of bonbons into his mouth and convulsively swallowing them.
    "Don't tell me that!" The colonel's mouth was so full of sweetmeats that his hysterical Italian roar into the telephone was hard for Job to follow. "I paid for stolen food. You bastards sent me condemned food!" He added a string of oaths, too fast and too unfamiliar for Job to catch. "Condemned and contaminated ! A dozen dead, maybe scores more to come. How am I supposed to explain that?"
    He fell silent, listening hard.
    "Cheap!" His voice rose to a higher scream. "What the hell has that to do with it, when you sell me poison? I could have been killed myself. What do I care what it was contaminated with?"
    The individual at the other end of the telephone made another long speech, loud and excited enough for Job to know that it was a man, and to catch the tone, if not the words. Colonel della Porta quieted considerably, and his face paled.
    "All right, all right," he said at last. "Sure, so I pass it on. That's easy for you to say. Who the hell