The Fall of the Tump Tower Syndicate

No enchanter’s circle, no mystic’s mandala was ever drawn with such painfully meticulous care as the conclusions being played out on the floor. Hour after hour, it went on, with a patience that at first terrified and then bored. It was the warfare of clerks, and it harried the enemy through many columns and files. Moist could read words that weren’t there, but the clerks found the numbers that weren’t there, or were there twice, or were there but going the wrong way. They didn’t hurry. Peel away the lies, and the truth would emerge, naked and ashamed and with nowhere else to hide.