She rested a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Leave the ornament with me. You have done well to confide in me. Go about your business and think no more about this. I’ll deal with it. I promise your name and that of your grandchild will never come into it. Do you trust me?”

“Your sister saved my darling girl’s life, for a time, anyway, and brought me the one good thing in my life. I pray to the High Heavens that you’ll not suffer what your sister did.”

Elen rubbed her own face. Even after two years, it hurt to think of Aoving lost beneath the crushing rock. What must her last moments have been like? The crack, the rumble, the change in the air, the mounting dust, the screaming as the first sliding weight of rock hit the upper houses …

Elen shut down the spiral of her thoughts. She could not walk that path. It was the way Aoving had lived, always imagining what worst thing might happen even though there was no way to know and usually no way to prevent the unexpected avalanches that engulfed you.

Oflidu was weeping as she got up and went back to the fire. The work had to get done, no matter her tears.

Elen said briskly, “Charwoman, I pray you, let the temple custodian know I will use one of my tokens for a meal this evening. Fish, if you have it.”

Oflidu snorted a laugh that broke through her tears. “A bit of fish, yes, I think we here can manage that.” Then, in a whisper, not looking up as she placed a log onto the flames, “My thanks.”

Elen pocketed the ornament, washed her face and hands, and grabbed her staff and her kit. She turned over options in her mind as she walked back to the entrance to the suite.

Kem and Ipis stood stiffly outside, on guard beside two of the archon’s sentinels. From inside Elen heard voices, an awkward laugh, an impatient clap of hands, followed by Luviara saying something she couldn’t quite make out.

“Warden Ipis,” Elen said, “I beg your leave. I need to speak—wish to speak, on a matter of possible importance—to Warden Captain Simo. I pray you will ask him to meet me here in the courtyard.”

Ipis looked Elen up and down with a skeptical grimace. “He’s busy with His Exalted Highness. What’s so important a deputy courier demands to speak to a warden captain?”

Elen considered the distance from the village to Cloudberry Ridge, and how much of the afternoon was left. “I can wait until His Exalted Highness is settled.”