After dinner, I took the tram to the Amal’theileian and walked from there to the Torivontaram, where I was lucky enough to find Iäna at a table full of rowdy opera singers. He got up when he saw me and met me in the doorway. “Thara? What’s going on? I did not think to see thee tonight.”

I said, “Let us take a walk.”

He assented readily and retrieved his greatcoat.

The streets of the Veren’malo were largely deserted. Iäna said, “We can walk to the Opera and admire the lights.”

“What’s playing there tonight?”

“Oh, I forget. Music of some kind. But tell me why thou’rt here—aside from the joy of my company, which we may take for granted.”

I felt myself smiling. “I wanted to ask if thou hast had the chance to talk to your wardrobe master.”

“I have, in fact,” said Iäna. “Ulsheän says that our Wardrobe Department can take two apprentices. She says she will ask the other operas. How many girls are in need of jobs?”

“Nine,” I said. “And they apparently don’t favor having a prelate as their employer.”

“Well, it leads to all sorts of things,” Iäna said. “I can name five comic operas in which the greatest obstacle to young love is the ingenue’s prelate employer. And that’s without stopping to think. There are dozens. And then there’s Civulano, where the prelate rapes the poor girl and then kicks her out for being pregnant.”

I thought with a pang of Isreän, who had probably only preempted being fired by throwing herself in the Mich’maika. “Does she commit suicide at the end?”

“She does,” said Iäna. “It’s a brilliant opera, but no one ever performs it because the lead is a servant girl.”

“Like a manufactory worker?”

“Quite, only a little less scandalous because of course comic operas have servant girls all over them. Ebrezhanar just switched genres. Many people actually object quite strongly to Civulano—we’ve never performed it, but I can’t think why.”

“Something for next year?”

“Yes, perhaps.” He gave me a sidelong look. “But thy nine foundling girls cannot be the only reason thou hast sought me out.”

“No,” I said and explained about my audience with the Amal’othala and the likelihood that I would be recalled to Cetho.

“Is it a certainty?”

“No, but only because I can’t predict what the Archprelate will do. It is a certainty that the Amal’othala will tell him there’s no use for me here if I’m not a Witness for the Dead.”

“The Amal’othala does not like thee?” Iäna hazarded.

“No, he does not. He has always disliked the fact that, technically, I work for the Archprelate, not the Amalomeire, but it is the Amalomeire that has to pay me.”

“I can see his point.”

“Oh, yes, so can I. But the Archprelate was very firm that the Archprelacy of Cetho could not pay me to work in the Prelacy of Amalo. Apparently there are all sorts of precedent cases in which things became so muddled that the prelate never got paid. Thus, although I regret that I have never been able to improve the Amal’othala’s opinion of me, I am quite grateful for the decision.”