CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
July 4, 2010
Early Evening
Leonard’s shoes clicked across the speckled sandstone of the oval room when he entered, but the stiff body of Tobias Randolf faced away from him as if he’d heard no sound. Randolf stood on the far side of a desk the size of a baby whale with his chin set toward a large window that overlooked a rock garden bristling with purple ferns.
The evening sunset bled fiery pools across the windows of the adjacent buildings. A moss-green carpet covered Randolf’s half of the floor, leaving the stone exposed on the other half, slicing a visible rift between power and weakness, forcing the servant to feel his lack of the master’s dominion and making a gesture of final separation between knowledge and ignorance. To stand in Randolf’s inner sanctum was t
