I had been clever, and hadn’t mentioned the little elephant to Malreesi Muelant. I was released back into the streets and left to make my own way home in my inappropriate robes. I hurried along, marveling at the fact that I had failed to recognize the woman in the disreputable inn until the very end of our colloquy. But without her wigs and little dogs she seemed like a completely different person. If I hadn’t smelled the face powder, I don’t think I ever would have known.

  So now I was in the hands of two spy-masters, and they didn’t seem to be working together. I was afraid, and felt a great deal of self-pity, especially because it was cold and a long walk back to Haunts and Scribbles. But I also sensed an opportunity.

  And I hadn’t forgotten about my scholarship. As soon as I got back to the tower I went to my chambers and piled on every robe I could find. Then I stomped back down the stairs to where Whinagher was still working at his desk. It was quite late, and he should have been in bed. I loomed over him, regarding him coldly. It seemed obvious to me that he must be part of Lianahndra’s conspiracy. She would be a fool if she didn’t recruit him. He was ideally placed to observe all comings and goings from the tower. And there was a whole bench of bored children who ran errands for him.

  This Whinagher was squat and a little lumpy, yet endeavored to appear neat and thin. He had a big nose and a wide, rather wet looking mouth, but he pretended to be a dry ascetic. He loved order, as evidenced by his tidy robes and tidy desk. Lewibindi had loved order, or at least his chambers had been very orderly. And he had turned out to be less of a scholar and more of a spy. By the transitive property, then, it seemed likely that Whinagher was also a practitioner of espionage.

  He looked up and asked me why I was standing there glowering at him. This presented me with a difficulty. I needed to find certain books, and Whinagher was the person you went to for that. But the books I wanted to ask for might be a little too revealing. After a moment I slipped the copy of Toebit’s ghost stories from my sleeve and passed it across the desk to him.

  “Did you enjoy them?” he asked.

  “I am not a child.”

  “Neither am I. But I enjoy them.”

  “Did you give me this book for a reason?”

  “Yes,” he said slowly. “You were lurking around and you looked bored.”

  “For some other reason?”

  He studied me. His seemed worried, solicitous, as if I were a friend whom he might help if he could only puzzle out what was wrong with me. “No, Bends, I didn’t,” he said. Then he took on a teasing tone. “I certainly didn’t think that it would inspire you to do some actual scholarship. Did it? Are you standing there resenting me for it?”

  This gave me an idea. “There’s a story in here about a haunted umbrella.”

  “There is.”

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Can objects become haunted?”

  “Only in stories.”

  I snorted. “Only in stories. If you say so.”

  “I do say so, Bends.” Again I endured his careful scrutiny. “Bends, is everything all right?”

  “I am just very cold, that’s all.”

  “Yes. You ran out in that thin robe of yours. You need to be careful. People die from getting drunk and passing out in a snow drift.”

  “I didn’t get drunk.”

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  “I’m glad. You drink too much, Bends. All of your friends are worried.”

  I made no answer to that. I stomped up the spiral stairs, past Lianahndra’s closed door and onwards to Moesebai’s chambers. He was in residence, having just changed into his sleeping robes.

  “Lad?” he asked, as I hovered in his doorway. His belly pushed at the fabric of his robes in a way that was almost obscene, and he clutched a handkerchief in one meaty hand. But his eyes were kindly, and his face was slack with worry.

  It sometimes happens like that. You decide to disregard, or even betray, someone you have been close to, or at least to give them a very stern talking to, and then they greet you with a smile, or tell you how much you mean to them. As if, while you’ve been laying in bed resenting them, they’ve been laying in bed ticking over their concerns for you, and you both decide to act on your sleepless thoughts at the same time. Only you decide to abandon the relationship, and they decide to smother you with love. Everyone in the tower seemed to have changed course when it came to their attitude towards me. I found it troubling.

  “I’m engaged in a spot of research,” I said, pretending to a lightness that I didn’t feel. “Trying to puzzle something out.” I moved into the room and began flitting from place to place, picking up little objects and putting them back down. He stood and watched me, his nose dripping, the handkerchief hanging uselessly from his fingers, forgotten. “I read an interesting little story about a ghost in an umbrella. It suggested a scholarly question. Can objects become haunted?”

  I watched him very closely as I said this. It seemed impossible to me that my old mentor was part of Lianahndra’s plot. But he had been born in Libreigia, and perhaps he had strong feelings about its independence, even if he’d never muttered a word about them to me. I was relieved to see a look of scholarly abstraction come into his face. He was only interested in the question itself. It had no other meaning to him.

  “I’ve never heard of it happening,” he said. “What have you been reading?”

  I was embarrassed to tell him. “Some ghost stories by Vahressa Toehbit. Meant for children, I know, but I found them diverting.”

  “Meant for children, perhaps, but she was a good writer. I knew her in my youth. She was a delightful person. She always wore a lot of scarves.”

  “Sounds charming.”

  “She was dismissed from the tower, unfortunately, as she did tend to make things up. But I thought that she usually built her lies on a foundation of truth.” He remembered his handkerchief and daubed at his nose. “But the only objects that have anything to do with ghosts are the spirit stones themselves.”

  I had heard of them of course, but knew very little about them. You learn of things in passing and take them for granted, and never bother to delve into their meaning. Then you find yourself in a conversation that makes you feel like an idiot. But there was no help for it. Idiocy must be born with equanimity, from time to time. “These spirit stones,” I said. “They’re used in the shrines?”

  The handkerchief was slowly lowered from his face. There was a look of despair in his eyes. He sat down heavily on his bed. “Child, how many years has it been since I brought you from Doefrit’s bend?”

  “Oh, a dozen or so.”

  “You really haven’t applied yourself at all.”

  “I have had little interest in the shrines, it’s true. As you know, my research focuses on the People of Skies and Visions.”

  “Yes. And I’ve long suspected that you chose to research them because there’s almost nothing written about them, and they live so far away.”

  I had been found out. I played it off with a shrug. “The fact that a path is untrodden means that the discoveries will be fresh.”

  “That sounds like an aphorism, but it’s nonsense, and you know it.” He sat with slumped shoulders, staring hard at the tiled floor. Then he sighed and looked up at me. “The spirit stones,” he said, in the tone of someone who wants to get through something quickly so that he can go to bed, “were found by Manrie in the year 826. They are believed to be the cast off exoskeletal plates of an ancient species of monster, now extinct. They attract the dead, and therefore they are used to create a shrine. A shrine is, really, nothing more than a cave that surrounds a spirit stone.”

  I thought about this. “Can they be carved?” I asked. “Made into nicknacks and such like?”

  He frowned. “I have never heard that they can be. Nothing is impossible, I suppose.”

  “And where might I find some books and scrolls about them? I am in the mood to spend a quiet evening in study.”

  “Fifth floor reading room, if my memory serves. You could check Vahrakuhl Gudoe’s Annals, or the Tome of Chitrahv Chadhi.”

  I turned to go, but paused in the doorway. I was suddenly overcome with a sense of sorrow. A sense of waste. If Malreesi Muelant made good her threat and hanged me for Lewibindi’s murder, there were only a handful of people who would mourn me. And Moesebai would be the chief mourner.

  “I have lived a dissipated life,” I said, and he looked at me sharply. “I will endeavor to do better.”

  I left before I could see his reaction to this statement. I was afraid that his expression would reveal his skepticism.