Vahrakuhl Gudoe’s Annals and the Tome of Chitrahv Chadhi were both large books, but in different ways. The Annals was long and narrow, and if I set it upright on the floor it would reach from my foot to my knee. The Tome was squat and fat. Both were hard to carry and annoying to read, as the scribe who had copied out Chadhi’s writing had a way of squinching up letters so that they all rolled together, and the scribe who had made the fine copy of Gudoe’s book was incapable of writing in a straight line. I took both volumes back to my chambers and endeavored to study them for awhile, but soon fell asleep, using the books as a pillow in the hopes that their knowledge might pervade my dreams.

  But by morning I was no wiser, and I was at an impasse. I was supposed to be watching Lianahndra and recording her movements. But if I took the books down to the atrium, which was the obvious place for me to set my watch, then anyone passing through would see what I was reading. I had to assume that nearly everyone was a spy, and that they would report my studies to Lianahndra, who would in turn become curious, would discover that I was interested in spirit-infested objects, and would realize that I’d stolen the elephant. Lewibindi’s elephant. From there it was but a few logical steps before blame for his death was laid at my door.

  So I abandoned the books in my chambers and went down the spiral stairs with nothing but a writing tablet and a stylus. Lian’s door was closed as I went by. I paused for a moment and put my ear against it. I thought I could hear her moving around in the room. I was relieved. In truth I had slept late and missed breakfast, and it would be perfectly reasonable for her to be gone from the tower at that hour of the day.

  Arriving in the atrium, I chose a pasty-faced girl from the scrum of children on the bench and sent her to the kitchens to procure my breakfast. I expected Whinagher to protest, as he does not like people eating in the atrium, but he merely watched me with a long face. His eyes were red, his shoulders slumped. I knew what was wrong with him, but felt that I had to perform a little show.

  “Is something the matter?” I asked.

  “The City Guard has been here,” he told me. “Lewibindi Jaestis is dead.”

  It’s funny. I had seen Lew’s body. I had seen his ghost. I had discussed his death with Malreesi Muelant. Yet the full sense of his demise hadn’t settled in me. Not until that moment. Lewibindi was dead. I was honestly sorry about it. Standing in the sober light of a winter morning, I found myself hoping to see him that day, looking forward to a late night visit, when he would regale me with tales of the nobles he had visited, the parties he had attended. But I wouldn’t see him. If I had woken in time for breakfast on any day during the past few years, I would have gone to the refectory and there he would have been, sitting at one of the long tables, gesturing to his cronies to make room for me on the bench. He had, I realized, been my friend. And I had disregarded his friendship, because the travails of my childhood prevented me from taking friendship seriously.

  All of this must have shown on my face, for Whinagher said, gently, “I shouldn’t have said it so plainly. I’m sorry.”

  “When did the guard come?” I asked.

  “Soon after breakfast. They went upstairs and talked with the archivist for about an hour. And they searched Lew’s rooms.”

  “Searched his rooms?”

  “Yes.” He leaned forward. “Bends, they’re saying that he was involved in something. Something dangerous.”

  *And you’re not involved?* I thought. Yet it seemed clear that he wasn’t. His manner was that of an innocent. Unless he was testing me. He could be testing me. “An affair with a noble?” I suggested.

  Whinagher was honestly surprised. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, it could be that. Yes, it could be. Was he having an affair with a noble?”

  “Several of them, I imagine.”

  “So maybe it was a jealous husband.”

  My ruse was working, so I added to it. I felt like a hunter, pulling sticks and bracken about me to hide from my prey. “Do you mean that Lewibindi died by violence?”

  “Yes,” Whinagher said. “Someone murdered him.”

  I dropped my tablet, which may have been laying it on a bit thick. I scrambled to pick it up, and then the girl arrived with a basket of steamed buns, and I used this as an excuse to retire to one of the reading tables. Whinagher watched me sadly as I ate. People began to come and go from the atrium. I chewed and recorded their names in the wax of the tablet. Then I found myself making a list.

  1. Malreesi Muelant invited Bhaetamistri to her house. Does she know that he’s a spy?

  2. Bhaetamistri wanted me to retrieve the elephant. Does he know that the ghost of the emperor was being used for spying? Yes, probably, as I told him as much. I told him that Lewibindi had left it in the Prince of Churl’s study.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  3. How was it being used for spying? Ghosts can only talk to the Sasturi. There is no Sasturi adept in Haunts and Scribbles.

  4. Does Malreesi know that the emperor’s ghost is tied to the elephant. Does she understand that the Sasturi have haunted objects?

  This last question excited me. If Malreesi didn’t know, then I had some leverage over the Sasturi. Surely Bhaetamistri and his flunky would want to keep Sasturi secrets from their enemies. And if I had leverage over the Sasturi, they would’t lie and say that Lew’s ghost had fingered me as his murderer. I sat there in the atrium, as winter sunlight streamed in through the tall windows, and felt the ecstasy of discovery. It was almost as good as that time when I read about the shape-shifting turtles. I wanted to laugh out loud, but that would never do. Whinagher, at his desk, would find me crushingly unsympathetic. So I scrunched my smile into a mournful scowl and considered my list.

  A figure loomed over me and I quickly moved an arm to cover my writing. It was Lianahndra herself. Her hair was disarrayed, and it was clear that she had been crying. Her thin nose had been whittled away by grief, and her nostrils bloomed redly at the end of its long stem. “Bends,” she said. “Have you heard?”

  I nodded somberly. “Whinagher has just told me.”

  “Were you with him? Did you see him last night?”

  “See him?”

  “He was supposed to be going to a ball at the Duke of Kehnmargaehn’s manor. Were you there?”

  “No,” I said, and let some guilt creep into my doleful expression. “I have been on a bit of a bender. The last few days are an unfortunate blur.”

  “So you didn’t see him yesterday?”

  I shrugged, feigning great embarrassment. “I might have. I have only hazy memories of where I went and who I talked to.”

  She stared at me a moment longer, then turned away. Her manner was brisk and disgusted. She walked back to the spiral stairs, but instead of going up them, she went down. My curiosity was aroused. I quickly collected my tablet and stylus and hurried after her. Whinagher caught my eye as I hurried past his desk. I made a doleful face, one full of concern for our mutual friend, and hoped that he would think that I was going to comfort her.

  The spiral stairs first pass the refectory as they descend into the earth. Then they pass the kitchens. Our tower is built on a hill, so the doors of the atrium face the street two stories above the doors that exit into the kitchen garden and the bath house. I thought that Lianahndra might be intending to take a bath, but she kept going down the stairs. Only the cellars were below. I have crept down to them on many occasion to filch a slice of ham. Yet it seemed unlikely that she was driven by hunger at that moment.

  She entered the cellars and passed through the cold rooms, which always smell so nice, full of the odor of smoked meat and ripe cheese and clean tofu. Beyond them lay the junk rooms. She turned at the threshold to take a lantern from a hook by the door and almost saw me. I was saved by a hanging goat carcass, which I slipped behind with great alacrity. She moved off into the junk rooms, where old furniture was piled in a haphazard way and cast-off robes slowly rotted. These rooms have a musty smell, and I used to avoid them. She moved through them with great certainty, as if this was a journey that she had made many times before. She was unaware of my subtle footstep behind her. At last she came to a low door. It had a crack in the wood of its lintel, and seemed like a very precarious portal. She opened it and entered the room beyond, closing the door behind her.

  I was left to wait in the junk room. I found myself sitting in the dark on an old trunk. Discarded objects seemed to breathe about me. I hoped that none of them were umbrellas. What would it be like, I wondered, if any object could hold a ghost? One did not, in general, want ghosts around. It was true that the nobles had a habit of going to the shrines every year and sitting in the gloom so that the spirits of their ancestors could come near. Perhaps they heard the whispers of the dead when they did so. But I doubt they heard full words, or complete sentences. In the world of us mere commoners, the Sasturi are the only ones who can talk to the dead. And most of us non-noble bumpkins have no interest in being whispered to by a dearly departed grandfather. We are very happy when the Sasturi neatly collect the ghosts and take them away to some suitable location for an afterlife. Not, apparently, to a pleasant forest grove by a bend in the river. But if the Sasturi guild houses are full of the dead, so be it. At least they’re not wandering about the streets, haunting honest people. I closed my eyes. I wouldn’t want to meet Lewibindi again. Nor would I want to meet my father, or my mother. The problem with the dead is that there is nothing you can do with them. They stand and stare at you blankly. They do not listen to your apologies, or apologize themselves. There is no hope of reconciliation or forgiveness.

  As I was pondering these things, the door opened and Lianahndra came out of the little room. The light of her lantern almost reached to where I was sitting. I went very still. She turned and closed the door behind her and then hurried away. I, of course, couldn’t follow her. I needed to see what was in the room.

  To do so, I first had to fetch a lamp. I picked my way back through the junk rooms and took the same lamp that she had been using from its hook by the doorway. It shed a little warmth onto my cold body. For a moment it felt like as if the warmth belonged to Lianahndra, like it was the warmth I would have felt if I had taken her in my arms and held her as she wept.

  The little room was quite dusty and unpleasant. It was nothing more than a further extension of the junk rooms, only the junk in it appeared to be more ancient, and even more useless. Some old books with mildewed pages. A shelf full of hats, their brims yellowed by historic sweat. A few broken toys, no doubt once belonging to the forebears of the children who sat on the bench in the atrium. I sneezed. The dust had been disturbed by Lian’s passage through the room, and the path of her footfalls was clearly marked along the floor. I followed it.

  There was a chest sitting in a corner, squat beneath the low ceiling. It was fairly new. The raw wood that of its construction still smelled slightly of sawdust. It had a lock on it, which I picked. I had been, after all, a rapscallion in Doefrit’s Bend before Moesebai ever found me. I knew a thing or two about getting into places that were meant to be locked up tight.

  The chest was full of bricks. I removed the top layer to be sure, but there was nothing but bricks. Ordinary bricks, of the kind that you build a wall out of, before you mortar on a facade of marble. They were strangely heavy, I thought, but perhaps they had been made of an even denser clay than usual. I knelt there, thinking, weighing a brick in my hand. But I could make no sense of it. Why would Lianahndra come grieving through the darkness to check on a load of bricks?