I was still wrangling over it when I fell asleep.

When I reached my office in the morning, there was a prelate standing by the door, an elven woman in a canon’s frock coat and a plain black skirt, her hair in a smooth prelate’s braid past her waist, a gray overcoat over one arm and a valise at her feet. Her eyes were pale green. Her ears were low. And she was my age or older.

“Are you Othalo Tomasin?” I said, surprised.

“I’m sorry,” she said, blushing and her ears dipping a little lower, “there’s been some confusion. It’s Tomasaran. I’m a widow.”

“I am sorry for your loss,” I said.

“It’s how I found my calling,” she said. “I touched my husband before they closed the coffin and…”

“I understand,” I said quickly, before she felt obliged to try to describe it to me. “And thus you dedicated yourself to Ulis, and they sent you here.”

“Yes.”

“Did they give you any training at all?”

“They said I was too old to be a novice. So, no, not very much.”

By which she most likely meant none. I could follow Vernezar’s reasoning, though I did not agree with it: being a Witness vel ama for the Dead did not require a prelate’s training in ritual and other duties, so why make life difficult for everyone? It was a lazy decision, but I didn’t have the authority to change it. “All right,” I said. “My name is Thara Celehar.”

Her ears lifted a little. “I am Velhiro Tomasaran.”

I unlocked the door of my office and waved her in. She put her valise in the corner and stood nervously by the petitioner’s chair; I hung my overcoat on the hook on the back of the door, sat down behind my desk, and said, “Please be seated.”

She laid her overcoat over the back of the chair and sat, though she still looked nervous. I said, “Othalo Tomasaran, I am not a monster. I certainly don’t blame you for the predicament you find yourself in. I will be glad to teach you what I can of being a Witness, but I’m sure you know as well as I do that I can’t teach you to hear the dead.”

“I don’t need you to teach me that,” she said. “Although I would be grateful for advice. I don’t … that is, I’ve only done it the once.”

I was opening my mouth to answer her, though with no good idea of what I was going to say, when a goblin man in his early twenties appeared in the doorway. “Othala Celehar?”

“Yes?” I said.

He looked exhausted and heartbroken. He said, “She hid the money and I don’t … I don’t know where to look.”

Showing good instincts, Othalo Tomasaran was already out of the petitioner’s chair, and I said, “Please, sit down and tell me what you need of me.”