Chapter 4Apart from two doors, recessed so deeply into the walls that they looked like darkened cave entrances, Bowlott’s office was bounded, floor to ceiling, by shelves. Crooked and bowed by their long service to the Moot, they loomed ominously over the room. Peering over their tilting edges were books and documents of all shapes and sizes; weighty tomes, slender volumes, wax-sealed scrolls, stacks of papers bound with faded ribbons, leaflets, pamphlets, mysterious well-worn boxes, and more than a few wrapped objects not readily identifiable.
Bearing the Moot’s crest and covered with a variety of ponderous and old-fashioned scripts, age-browned labels marked past attempts to bring order to this domain, but, curled and brittle, this slender shield line had been long overwhelmed, leaving
