“Oh! Good morning, othala! May we help you?”

“We are Thara Celehar, a Witness for the Dead. We need to find the House Temada.”

“Just a moment.” She got up and disappeared through a discreet door among the wall hangings behind her desk. It was longer than “a moment,” but not as much as ten minutes before she returned, accompanied by an elderly elven man whom she introduced as a senior clerk of the postal service.

He and I exchanged bows, and he said, “You are looking for the Temada.”

“Yes,” I said. “Our witnessing requires it.”

“The postal service is under no obligation to help you,” he said sharply.

“Not at all,” I said and wondered if he was going to seek the satisfaction of being disobliging just because he could.

But apparently he had only wanted to make it clear where he stood, for he said, “Their compound is in the Tobazran district. First stop past the Mountain Gate on the Cevoro line. Then you follow the tram line for two blocks, and you’ll find the Temada on your right. There is only the one door in that wall.”

“You sound as though you’ve been there,” I said.

He smiled slightly. “On your left, you’ll find Tobazran Post Office Number Three, where we worked for many years.”

“Of course,” I said. “Thank you.”

“The postal service is here to help, othala,” he said, and we bowed to each other again.

I walked to the Dachenostro to board the first tram I saw that was taking the Cevoro line. At the first stop after we rattled through the Mountain Gate, I disembarked and found myself in an obviously well-to-do neighborhood of shops and small apartment buildings nothing like the tenement I lived in. I walked north two blocks, following the tram line, and as the clerk had said, there was only one door in the block-long wall on my right.

There was a crest on the door, two swans back-to-back, their necks intertwined. Presumably the Temada’s crest—I did not recognize it.

There was a bell rope beside the door. I pulled it firmly and then waited for what seemed like a very long time. Finally, the door was opened by a puzzled-looking elven woman in green-and-gold livery. “Can I help you, othala?”

“I am Thara Celehar, a Witness for the Dead. I am looking for Osmin Pavalo Temin.”

“Well, you won’t find her here,” the woman said. “Osmer Temar won’t even have her mentioned.”

“Oh dear,” I said, with a pang of sympathy for Osmin Temin. “Do you have any idea of where she might be?”

“The last we heard, she’d started some sort of school in Cemchelarna. But that was two years ago. Maybe more. I’m sorry, othala.”

Two years ago made it after she’d been forced to resign from the foundling school board, so either she had some new venture in Cemchelarna or the woman’s information was muddled and out of date. Either seemed plausible.