Her foot brushed mine. Glancing down, I saw a piece of paper folded down to almost nothing on the floor between us. I moved the toe of my shoe to cover it. I did not look at the girl.

“Blessed goddesses, what is it this time?” Osmin Temin moaned to the ceiling.

The girl said, “I don’t know, osmin. Just that it’s important.”

“It’s always important with Min Tesavin,” Osmin Temin said. “Othala, if you will excuse us, we have a school to run.” Her tone indicated she was done with our conversation; I had no reason to argue with her.

“Of course, osmin,” I said. “Thank you for your help.”

She glared at me in passing; then she was gone, the girl obedient in her wake. I retrieved the paper and tucked it safely in my inside coat pocket, then stepped into the corridor. An elven girl walking alone glanced up and then quickly looked down, hunching her shoulders and speeding up. I found my way back to the stairs and gratefully left.

I did not stop to unfold the paper until I was back at the Abandoned Bridge. It read:

PLEASE HELP US

STOP THEM

I stared at it for a long time, until a passing pedestrian bumped into me and I realized I was standing in the middle of the sidewalk. I put the paper back in my pocket and started walking. A good half of my mind was on that message. Please help us stop them. Or Please help us. Stop them. Either way it came to the same thing: the pupils at Osmin Temin’s school had something they wanted stopped so badly they resorted to passing notes to strangers. But something about which they couldn’t simply go to a judicial Witness, meaning perhaps that they wanted it stopped without resorting to the law. I thought of the scared girls I had seen and knew that whatever it was, it was serious, even if it wasn’t illegal.

But short of going back to the school and demanding to talk to the girl who had dropped the note—a tactic that seemed guaranteed to fail—what could I do to find out what was going on?

Nothing today, certainly. I had to go ask the Marquess Ulzhavel for permission to exhume his wife’s body, and by the time that task was complete—success or failure and I had no idea which—it would be too late to return to Goshawk Street. But perhaps I could do that tomorrow and find out if any of the neighbors were inclined to gossip. Perhaps somebody had seen or heard something that would give me a starting place.

In the meantime, I took the tram from Emperor Belvorsina III Square up to the Dachenostro, the central station, then changed to the Zulnicho line and traveled south to the Ulzhavadeise ostro, where I disembarked and walked to the old compound. The gatekeeper recognized me and let me in.