Despite the excitement in the city, or perhaps because of it, the following days were quite dull for me. Everyone else was out in the streets, whispering rumors back and forth, engaging in delighted conjecture, pretending to worry, parsing politics. Who had done it? It couldn’t be that avalanches are simply natural occurrences. There hadn’t been an avalanche on the Step Cliffs for nearly fifty years. Besides, Nirmaluko the Builder had spent considerable time shoring them up before he started construction on the palace. No, some secret hand was at work. It was suspicious that the avalanche had included the west wing of the palace-to-be. That it had obliterated months of labor. Somewhere the poor builder was tearing out his hair. Down in Direschki District the king was pouting and looking upwards. Everyone else in the city was having a wonderful time. I have always found it strange, the way that calamity can make people happy. Not tragedy, of course. But we do seem to find delight in an accident when no one is hurt. No one was hurt, fortunately. The only casualties were Nirmaluko’s pride and the king’s patience.

But as I said, I did not get to engage in this festival of gossip. I heard about it second hand, from Lianahndra and Lewibindi. Lian gave information only grudgingly, of course. She acted as if rumor-mongering was beneath her. Lew was nicer. After a long day he would come into my chambers and sit on the edge of my bed and recount all of his discoveries to me. He went back and forth between the towers and the court, and the Dowager Duchess of Traestaveta, who doted on him, regaled him with stories of the king’s moodiness and the queen’s attempts to placate him. But these were mere tidbits for him to pass along to me once the sun had gone down. A meager meal of information for one such as myself, who enjoys being at the center of things. I ate up greedily nonetheless, as I was starving after a long day of sitting in the reading rooms, working on my own desultory research.

During those days of my exile from all things enjoyable I couldn’t help resuming my old acquaintance with Moesebai of the Elbows, the elderly scholar who was responsible for my presence in Libreigia. I had come upon him when I was a mere lad, gladly spending my days swinging between the rope bridges of Doefrit’s Bend. He had come to the old Rahasabahst Kingdom to do some research. He was interested in the civil distress of the year 1362, which had led to the closing of the shrines. Well trodden ground when it came to the scholars of Haunts and Scribbles, of course. But he had discovered some dispatches from a seneschal of King Poritifahr’s court, and he was following up on them. This seneschal, it seemed, had been quite an adept spy, a member of Haunts and Scribbles herself, but one who sadly went rogue. Her dispatches had been uncovered only a few years before, part of the loot that was brought to Libreigia after the fall of Raensapal, when they piqued my mentor’s curiosity. Moesebai later became famous his research into them. Famous in the way that a scholar can become famous, of course. His name widely known by five or ten other people.

But he was very kind to me when we first met, as I had recently been orphaned in quite a scandalous way. My dear mama became a drunkard and a slattern after my father died, and she was murdered by a passing barge captain. I was only in my second decade of life at the time, and was considered rather a nuisance in Doefrit’s Bend. No one even bothered to use my proper name, and after my mother died I didn’t want to use it much, either. My family name had become something of a joke in the town, and everyone had taken to calling me Dirt. But when Moesebai showed up, he declined to follow the example of the locals. When he asked my real name, I wouldn’t tell him, so he called me Doefrit, after the town. Not a town I liked much, mind you, but I accepted it, as he started paying me to run little errands for him, and I was often at his side. I accompanied him to Rahasabahst itself, and I was amazed by that city, by its incense burners and elephants and wide canal. Then he took me to Libreigia, and I realized that Rahasabahst was a mere pimple on the backside of the Azerdondea demesne.

He was now quite old, and had gotten fat. He moved about with little grunts of pain and discomfort, and I believe that his bowels were misbehaving, as he always smelled of the privy. He had a perpetually running nose, and many large and floppy kerchiefs that he kept up his sleeve. For years he had invited me to his chambers occasionally for a rather obligatory tea. Now he started to do so every day. I could think of no excuse not to go.

His chambers were a few flights below Lianahndra’s, and his windows also faced the Step Cliffs. They hadn’t been cleaned for awhile, and when I stood and looked out at the palace-to-be, its rubble gleaming magnificently in the sunlight, my vision was obscured by streaks of grime. It was a little like trying to read a palimpsest, a parchment that has been scraped over, partially erasing what was written on it so that it can be used again. I enjoy looking at palimpsests. There are the fresh words, and the words beneath them, and I like to think that they are speaking to each other in some manner. So it was in Moesebai’s chambers. There was the palace, like an old treatise now obscured, and there was my former master, with many secrets to reveal, fresh text for the scraped parchment of the day. But my metaphor really should have been reversed, as the palace was new and Moesebai was old.

“I heard a very scandalous thing a few nights ago,” I told him.

He was busying himself with the tea pot, trying to force a besmirched cosy over its the swell of its porcelain body. “What was that?” he asked indifferently.

“Someone told a story about a Sasturi removing a ghost from a shrine.”

“Hummpf,” he said.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Hummpf?” I asked.

“Well, what of it?”

“What of it? It’s scandalous. If a songster were to take such a story to a little wayside village, the villagers would stone him to death.”

“They might.”

“They would. It would upset the social order. No one likes to think that the duke might come back, after he’s been safely deposited in a shrine. People are always happy to be rid of their masters, and they tend to be grateful for the fact that everyone dies, noble or not.”

“Yes, that’s true. But ghosts do sometimes escape the shrines.”

I almost dropped my tea cup. “What?”

“I’m sure I read that somewhere. Maybe in *The Travels of Uesandhra*. She was a good scholar, and trustworthy, I think.”

“Well,” I said, dealing with a spot of splashed tea on my robes, “it’s certainly not widely known.”

“No, I suppose not. The Sasturi like to keep their secrets.”

“But surely that’s a secret for the oracles. The Sasturi rarely go to the shrines anymore.”

“Yes, yes, I know that you think they’re the champions of the people. Always there when a peasant dies, and happy to capture the ghost in their weavings. But where do they take the ghosts, do you think?”

“Well, my mother and father were taken to a bend in the river. I was a mere scrap of a boy at the time, but I was happy to give them some coins for the service. I still have the map they gave me somewhere.”

“Umm,” he said, taking a sip of tea with his attenuated lips. “A forgery, no doubt.”

“What?” I said again, adding a new tea stain to the one already extant on my robes.

“Sasturi don’t simply take ghosts and release them into the wild,” he said. He regarded me with a cynical and disappointed expression in his weary eyes. “I thought you had progressed in your studies some. It seems you’ve gained very little from your time in Haunts and Scribbles.”

“All of my research has been about the People of Skies and Visions,” I said haughtily, “as you know.”

“Well, it’s warped your understanding. Those nomads might expose their dead and hope that the sky will claim the spirits, but the sky in other parts of the world isn’t so considerate.”

“If the Sasturi don’t take the dead where they tell you they’re taking them, where do they take them?” I asked, shoving my distress into an ungainly sentence.

“They take them to the Guild Houses.” He held up a hand. “Don’t ask me what they do with them there. It is unknown. And there is some dispute over whether what I’m telling you is correct, of course. But I believe that it is. I have read the arguments. There is far more evidence on my side than on the other.”

“Are you telling me that they cohabitate with ghosts?”

He shrugged and started fiddling with the tea cosy again. It had a garish pattern of yellow flowers embroidered on it, and the air of a beloved possession. “Maybe. And if they do, they might be able to take a ghost or two with them when they leave the house.”

“All right,” I said mulishly, “suppose that what you say is true. In the story I heard, a Sasturi had stolen a ghost right out of a shrine.”

“Hmm. Well, that does seem unlikely. The oracles and the Sasturi have been avowed enemies for years and years. Although it is said that some Sasturi actually take coin from the oracles, and run errands for them. But I don’t think that can be true. The Guild Houses are very powerful, in their own way.”

“Well, any profession must have its rogues,” I said.

“You seem to be evidence of that,” he replied. It hurt my feelings a little. I knew that I had disappointed him. He didn’t need to jab at me in that way.

Our conversation was interrupted by a small boy appearing at Moesebai’s door. He was looking for me. “There are people asking for you at the foot of the tower,” he told me, and my heart sank. Surely the cabal of wine shop owners would be content with my banishment. They wouldn’t send bully boys to Haunts and Scribbles to embarrass me.

I descended the spiral stairs with a heavy heart, wondering what fresh horror was about to be visited upon me. But I was delighted to find a group of songsters waiting for me on the atrium benches. They were a disturbance to the place, and Whinagher the Scribe was quite annoyed by their presence. But Whinagher is annoyed by everyone’s presence, and safely ignored. I met my friends with many hugs and kisses. They had come to usher me out to a party in Direschki District, a little fait that the Prince of Churls was giving. They were to provide some of the entertainment, and had decided to disguise me as one of their own. I am often criticized for my bosom bonds with the songsters, who are generally considered mercenary ingrates. But only haughty and ignorant people think so. A kindly songster is the best friend that you will ever have.

So I rattled back up the stairs to change into my finer robes, and then off we went through the snowy streets, my companions singing ditties and telling scurrilous yarns. I giggled and quipped with the best of them, but my enjoyment was somewhat spoilt when we turned down Twistturn Alley and I happened to glance back and saw a matronly woman in grey-green robes duck into a doorway. She was there when I looked again two streets later. We were being followed.