Ned snapped his teeth together softly, as he often did when irritated. “Thank you, sir.”

“Congratulations. Upper management must have a great deal of faith in you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He held the blue scroll tightly in his right hand, while his bad left arm tried to pry it free. In one of his more unpleasant demises, the left limb had been severed. The arm had come back to life without him, and though a medic had stitched it back on, it still had a mind of its own, with obnoxious tendencies in tense situations. Given a chance, he knew the bad arm would throw the scroll at Tate. That might get Ned eaten, and he had enough worries already.

He turned to leave once more. Tate cleared his throat, and Ned stopped.

“Sir?”

“You’re dismissed. Send in Yip. Very sloppy work lately. I suspect disciplinary action is in order.” Tate clicked his beak with a grin. “And tell him to stop by the commissary and bring up some bread, cheese, a bottle of wine, and a dinner salad. Something zesty, but not too filling.”

Ned walked from the office, feeling very much like a condemned man. A blue scroll was supposed to be a good thing. It meant upper management had taken special notice of him. But it was like being noticed by the gods in the heavens. More often than not, it was a one-way ticket to a tragic fate. Up to now, he’d done a fine job of being unexceptional. Except for not staying dead, but that wasn’t his doing.

His fellow bookkeepers avoided looking at him as he walked through the halls. And everyone averted their eyes from the blue scroll clutched in his hand. Rumor had it that blue scrolls were enchanted to strike all but their intended reader blind. This was mere conjecture, since almost no one had actually ever seen a blue scroll. But no one was willing to take the chance of looking directly at it.

Ned returned to his office, a small chamber he shared with two others: Yip, a ratling, and Bog, the slime mold. Yip was counting a stack of gold coins. He’d shove one in his pocket once in a while. Ned and Bog always pretended not to notice. Neither liked the ratling, and they weren’t about to discourage anything that might get him eaten. Bog was busy weighing bars of silver. Yip glanced up from his work just long enough to grin and chuckle.