I moved slowly around the apartment, half listening to Tomasaran and Mer Osthonharad making painful conversation about funeral arrangements. Where had she been standing? I came to a stop in front of the bed, its bare mattress mute testimony to Merrem Osthonharad’s death. The sheets would have been burned. Here. Yes, she had been standing here. And she stepped up.

There was nowhere else to step up onto; I climbed onto the bed.

“Othala Celehar?” Tomasaran said anxiously.

“Just a moment,” I said. From here she had reached up. I looked and saw a gap in the plaster along the edge of the ceiling. I stood on tiptoe on the unpleasantly yielding surface of the mattress and reluctantly slid my hand into the gap.

I was half expecting to be met by a rat’s teeth, but there was nothing there. For a horrible moment, I thought I would have to tell Mer Osthonharad that his money had been stolen after all, but then the last part of the movement—so familiar to Merrem Osthonharad that she didn’t have to think of it—came back to my mind. I turned my hand to the right and found that there was a hollow place behind the plaster. It took some difficult maneuvering, and I was nearly up to my elbow in the wall, but finally I touched a leather bag, which I was able, though my fingers were cramping, to drag out.

“I think this is it,” I said, stepping down off the bed, and handed the leather bag to Mer Osthonharad.

“Blessed goddesses,” he said and quickly opened the bag. “Yes. Yes. Thank you, othala. Now she can be buried properly. Thank you.”

“I follow my calling,” I said, politely ignoring the tear tracks shining on his face. “But I am afraid you will have to show us the way out.”

Anora and I took Tomasaran to lunch at the Chrysanthemum, where she and I listened raptly as Anora told stories about his twenty years as a prelate in Ulvanensee. Afterwards, Anora walked back to Ulvanensee to begin preparations for that afternoon’s round of funerals, and Tomasaran and I walked to the Sanctuary of Csaivo. Outside its gates, I stopped and said, “I don’t know exactly what your instructions from Dach’othala Vernezar are.”

“He said you would teach me how to be a Witness for the Dead. There weren’t really any instructions involved.”

I had been afraid of that. “Then I suppose the best we can do is for you to accompany me. It will certainly show you what being a Witness for the Dead entails.”

“I already know more than I did this morning,” she said shyly, and I reminded myself to smile at her, no matter how stiff and awkward it was.

“Then the next thing you’re going to learn about is exhumations.”

“Exhumations? But once they’re buried, what can you do? Or can you still hear them that long after?”

“No,” I said, “you’re also going to witness an autopsy.”