Particularly appreciated among suicides, I added, and shook the thought away. But it was hard to forget that cold, ashen girl in the Brotherhood’s crypt, hard to forget that she was one among probably a dozen who would choose that answer to their problems this year.

I had thought about suicide, after Evru’s execution, after my disgrace. Some days I had thought about nothing else. It was probably the emperor who had saved my life, by giving me a purpose, a task, a question to answer. And then Ulis had spoken to me in a dream, and I had known that my calling had not been taken from me. After that there was no question of suicide, not if my god still needed my work. But I remembered what it had felt like.

I sat behind my desk, watching the door, and tried to think of ways I could find out what the girls at Osmin Temin’s school went in fear of. Gossiping neighbors were still my surest bet, although I shrank from the prospect of spending the afternoon talking to strangers—especially since this was not official business; this was just my curiosity and the sharp, nasty jolt I felt when I thought of that note, the feeling that if I did not do something, no one would.

Some time later, Tomasaran came back smiling. She said, “Merrem Bechevaran is very kind.”

“Do you feel better oriented?”

“Much,” she said, “although I am sure I will forget most of it before we leave the building.”

“You can go talk to the cartographers whenever you like. I don’t expect you to spend the morning cooped up in here with me.”

“Why not? Isn’t that part of being a Witness for the Dead?”

“Ah,” I said. “Actually, no. It’s part of an agreement the Archprelate reached with Prince Orchenis. Ordinarily, clerical Witnesses for the Dead have a benefice and speak to the dead as their services are called for. But Prince Orchenis requested the Archprelate assign me here for that purpose and no other.”

“Then when you asked Othala Veltanezh to help educate me…?”

“Even if you are not a beneficed prelate yourself, you will find it invaluable to know what beneficed prelates do. Especially if, as seems likely, Dach’othala Vernezar intends this office to persist after I am gone.”

“But then why was it Prince Orchenis who asked, and not Dach’othala Vernezar?” she said.

That was a good question. “Dach’othala Vernezar was listening to the faction of prelates who say that speaking to the dead is nonsense.”

She gave me a dubious look. “Politics.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I had hoped to be rid of politics,” she said wearily.

“Was your husband in the government?”

“He served on the city council of our town and aspired passionately to be mayor. He thought about little else.”

“I know of no endeavor undertaken by elf or goblin that does not have politics saturating it,” I said apologetically. “The work of your calling is perhaps the best we can do.”