The door to the chamber which took up the entire top floor was open, although Utta felt oddly sure that in any ordinary circumstances it would be locked just like the floors below it. No light burned inside, and from where the two women stood on the landing at the top of the stairs, their torch barely threw light past the doorway. As Utta moved closer the shadows inside bent and stretched. Suddenly she felt short of breath. Zoria, preserve me from dangers known and unknown, she prayed, from peril of the body and peril of the soul. “Your Grace?”

Merolanna frowned as if irritated at herself. She had not left the top of the stairs. “Very well. I’m coming.” She hesitated a moment longer, then walked forward to stand at Utta’s side. Together they stepped into the doorway, both of them holding their breath. Utta lifted the torch.

If the room full of plaster models at the bottom of the tower had seemed cluttered, this was something else again. Books had been stacked everywhere across the floor in unsteady-looking towers, and across every surface, many of them open, covering the two long tables in heedless piles. More than a few of the volumes lay bent-backed, perched like clumsy nesting birds on tabletop or pile, in positions that likely had not changed since the king’s disappearance. Many had lost pages: a mulch of creased parchments covered the floor like drifts of leaves. For Zoria, tutored in the thrifty ways of the Zorian sisterhood, where books were a precious, expensive resource and could be read only with the permission of the adelfa, the mistress of the shrine’s sisterhood, this careless plenitude was both exhilarating and shocking.

“What a dreadful clutter!” said Merolanna. “And it’s frightfully cold in here, too. I’m shivering, Utta. Would you see if there’s any wood, and light a fire?”

“Light not any fires, great ladies!” a tiny voice piped. “I beg ’ee, or tha will scorch my own sweet mistress most cracklingly!”

Utta jumped and dropped the torch, which with great good fortune landed in one of the few places on the floor not covered with sheets of book paper. She snatched it up again, breathing thanks she had not set the entire tower aflame. “What was…?”

Merolanna had given a little screech at the mysterious words, and now reached out and clutched Utta’s shoulder so fiercely that the Zorian sister could barely restrain a cry of her own. “It was here! In this very room!” the duchess whispered. She made the sign of the Three. “Who speaks?” she demanded aloud, her voice cracked and quavering. “Are you a ghost? A demon spirit?”

“No, great ladies, no ghost. I will show myself presently.” The faint, shrill voice might almost have come from the phantom of the dead mouse downstairs. A moment later, Utta saw something stirring on the tabletop. A minuscule, four-limbed shape crawled out from between two close-leaning piles of books. When it stood up, and was revealed to be a man no taller than Utta’s finger, she nearly dropped the torch again.