We ordered a pot of isevren, which was a good evening tea, and agreed on the chicken pie for dinner. The server, an elven boy who Anora said was the son of the proprietor, brought the tea promptly, and the tea was quickly followed by two wedges of chicken pie, served with a sharp local cheese. Anora and I talked of other things over dinner, but once we had settled the bill and were lingering with the last of the isevren, Anora said, “Thara, truly, why dost thou think the marquise was murdered?”

“I suppose I have been infected by the marquess’s certainty,” I said. “There was something about that note that frightened me.”

“Most of the time, unsigned threats are merely posturing,” Anora said. “A coward’s bluff.”

“Yes,” I said. All prelates of Ulis were familiar with unsigned notes not very different from the one the marquise had received. Like Csaiveise clerics, we were frequently blamed for the deaths we attended. A note I had received during my prelacy in Aveio had called me a murderer. The notes I had received when I started my prelacy in Amalo had called me worse, although that was for different reasons. “But this one was … I don’t know, but I think it was a real threat and that it was carried out.”

“But what could the marquise possibly have been ‘interfering’ in that would necessitate her death?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s what I have to discover.”

I spent the next morning in my office in the Prince Zhaicava Building, waiting for petitioners. There were none, and at noon I was free to find a cheap lunch and take the tram to the Sanctuary of Csaivo. The goblin novice on duty at the main entrance greeted me politely and said, “Dach’othala Ulzhavar is in the mortuary, othala, if that is whom you seek.”

“It is, thank you,” I said. I descended the spiral stairs, walked along the gloomy passageway, and found Csenaia Ulzhavar—middle-aged, elven, wearing worker’s boots beneath his robes—standing over a table in the middle of the mortuary and teaching a novice—an elven boy, thirteen or fourteen, who looked like he was about to faint—how to do an autopsy.

“Good afternoon, Othala Celehar,” Ulzhavar said.

“Good afternoon, dach’othala,” I said. “I have come with a question.”

“Your questions tend to be interesting,” said Ulzhavar. “Tera, go refill our water jug.”

The boy fled gratefully with an almost whispered “Yes, dach’othala.”

“It’s his first autopsy,” said Ulzhavar. “It will get easier for him with practice.”

“Yes,” I said, thinking of my own novitiate.

“But what is your question?”

“Is there a poison the effects of which would look like a thunderclap coronary?”

“You aren’t asking hypothetically.”

“I have a petition,” I said.

“Ah. Well, the short answer is, yes, several, although most of them are quite rare.”

“But not all?”