Two Serpents Rise Read Online Free PDF Page B

suite. Tollan would want to see him before he drowned in the sea of paperwork no doubt already covering his desk. Much as it pained Caleb’s boss to admit, some truths could not be conveyed in the blanks of official forms.
    He saw her office door, and slowed.
    Tollan’s door was a pane of frosted glass—a source of comfort to the whole department, because from her general position in the office they could tell her mood. If she was at her desk, the world was at peace; if pacing, at war; if tending her peace lily, best hide and wait for the axe to fall.
    Caleb could not see Tollan, or her desk, or her peace lily. A black blade had cut her office from the universe. Terrible things moved in that blackness, and few of them were human.
    The door crept open.
    Caleb ducked into the nearest cubicle, startling its blocky, middle-aged occupant from his work.
    “Sorry, Mick.”
    “Caleb? Where have you been? The boss is looking for you.”
    “I’ll talk to Tollan when she’s done with—”
    “Not the boss,” Mikatec whispered. “The boss .”
    Caleb knelt behind the cubicle wall. Mick had papered his workspace with pictures of his younger, sleeker self, playing ullamal, holding athletic trophies, screaming triumph. Caleb crouched beside his coworker’s memories, and listened.
    Quills scratched paper. Chair wheels squeaked. Fingers drummed on a desk. An actuary the next row over coughed.
    From the darkness beyond Tollan’s door came a voice like the end of the world: “I hope our trust in you is not misplaced.”
    Color faded from the pictures of Mick’s glory. Ghostlights overhead flickered and died. Someone—a new hire, had to be—cursed, and someone else shushed her. The noise of pens and chairs and drumming fingers stopped. The risk management department grew still.
    Tollan’s door swung shut.
    Three distinct, sharp taps trespassed on the hush, then three more, then the thud of a bronze-shod staff on stone. The noises repeated. A heavy robe swept over the stone floor.
    Caleb held his breath.
    The King in Red moved among the cubicles, wreathed in power. The taps were his triple footsteps: the bones of his heel, the ball of his foot, the twiglike toes striking in sequence. “As you were,” he said. No one stirred. Sixty years ago, the King in Red had shattered the sky over Dresediel Lex, and impaled gods on thorns of starlight. The last of his flesh had melted away decades past, leaving smooth bone and a constant grin.
    He was a good boss. But who could forget what he had been, and what remained?
    The footsteps receded, and light seeped back into the world. An elevator bell rang. When the doors rolled shut, Caleb exhaled, and heard others do the same. A thin layer of sweat slicked his brow.
    He patted Mick on the shoulder, loosened his collar, and walked to Tollan’s office.
    *   *   *
    Tollan paced behind her desk, cradling a glass of mescal. She took a sip, and shook herself. Her long black hair was up in a tightly coiled braid, which left her face severe and thin.
    “Where have you been?” she asked when he closed the door.
    “Sleeping.”
    “Sleeping.” She laughed without humor, and looked down as if surprised to find herself holding a drink. “Once in a while I convince myself I’m used to him, I can handle him. Then I see him angry.” She squeezed the glass as if to crush it, reconsidered, and set it on her desk.
    There was no need for her to say whom she meant.
    Caleb waited. At last, he said: “I was at Bright Mirror until half-past four. If I arrived earlier, I would have been too tired to help you or anybody.”
    Tollan kept pacing. He had expected her to shout at him. Her silence was worse.
    “Bright Mirror is under control,” he continued. “Nobody was hurt. The Tzimet are contained. They’ll die slowly, but they will die. We can keep the water flowing. He shouldn’t blame this on you.”
    “That’s your professional opinion?” Her shoes ground against the floor when she