Chapter 20: The Bureau's Audit Begins Three Days Early

The note on the common board outside the Record Room read: ADMINISTRATIVE INVENTORY IN PROGRESS — ACCESS SUSPENDED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. The lettering was standard Ministry stencil, the kind produced by a regulation stamp set available from any Bureau supply office. Elias had used the same typeface himself on three occasions, printing suspension notices for the east archive when the humidity enchantments failed. He knew exactly how long it took to prepare one. It was not a notice that required preparation. It was a notice that required having the stamp set ready.

He stood at the correct distance from the door and read it again, not because the meaning had changed but because reading it a second time gave him three seconds to observe the corridor through his peripheral vision without appearing to observe the corridor. The glass pane set into the upper half of the door was frosted but not fully opaque. Two figures moved inside. Dark robes, not Greymoor staff grey. One was at the far workbench. The other was closer, partially obscured, doing something at the position where the third shelf met the wall.

His workstation was the second from the left. He could see the chair pulled away from the table at an angle that was not the angle he had left it. The correction slip tray had been moved. The maintenance log was open. He had left it closed, the spine facing the wall.