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days, and the timing of it strikes me.
    “He came not long before the last maid left, then?” I say. “What was her name? Clarisa?”
    “Yes, Clarisa Fenn. She’d worked here for ages. She was ever so nice.” Then she looks uncertain, as if maybe Clarisa was not nice after all or, I suspect, not approved of by Florence.
    “Wasn’t it quite sudden, her leaving?” I say.
    Chloe nods, eyes wide and shining. She wants to tell me, I can see. I just need to push her a little more.
    “It wasn’t because of those…
sounds
in the cellar, was it?” I ask, with a perhaps too theatrical shudder.
    Chloe looks as if she might topple over from excitement. “She was scared,” she whispers.
    I lower my voice, widen my eyes: “You’ve heard it too?”
    She nods wildly. “Clarisa thought…well, she thought it was a demon!” She looks sheepish at this.
    “What do you mean?” I say.
    “Demons aren’t real,” she says hastily, as if I’m going to report her for having folklorish beliefs. “Clarisa is Lorian, though.”
    I’m right, then, that Florence likely disapproved of her. Lorians are the oldest sect that worship the Nameless One and still have the most folklorish elements in their religious practice. They used to portray the Nameless One as a white stag, until the Crown declared it blasphemy, twenty odd years ago. The year before I was born, angry Lorians joined forces with folklore practitioners and element worshippers and all those that opposed the Crown for other reasons. The goal was to oust the childless King Zey in favor of his half brother, a Lorian by marriage, but it was a short-lived revolution. The king’s brother was hung, along with his wife and children, and the revolutionary forces were slaughtered. It gets called the Lorian Uprising, but the Crown claimed the whole thing was orchestrated by a power-hungry coven of witches. The Spira City of my childhood was still reeling from the aftermath, and there is plenty of ill feeling left, to say the least. The first thing Florence asked me when I was hired on was “What religion are you?”
    “Rainist,” I answered promptly.
    I’m not, but the king is Rainist, and it is the only unassailable answer. When I declared myself so, Florence gave a stern little nod of approval and Chloe looked relieved. Most people in the Twist go to the big Baltist temple, where there is lots of music and dancing and round honey cakes after service. I’d never go to a Rainist temple, where they all wear white and kneel, praying in silence for hours, and seem to be constantly fasting. In any case, Lorians must tread carefully these days. The white stag has disappeared from their temples, and talk of demons is imprudent at best.
    “Do you know why she thought such a thing?” I ask.
    “She saw something,” says Chloe. “We all heard a noise on the landing one night. A sort of…grunting noise. Clarisa got up to see, and then she was screaming and screaming and everybody was up, and Mrs. Och told us to go back to bed, and that everything was fine. But Clarisa left the next day. She was a wreck, and all she said was,
I saw it.
”
    This is maddening. “But what did she see?” I press her.
    “I don’t know!” says Chloe, delighted with our conversation. I swallow my sigh of frustration and file away the name Clarisa Fenn. It shouldn’t be difficult to find her.
    “Mrs. Och is very kind,” I say, changing tack as Chloe piles wood in Frederick’s fireplace.
    “Oh yes,” she says.
    I’m not sure how to follow this in a way that will get Chloe to open up about Mrs. Och but am interrupted, anyway, by Frederick coming in.
    “Excuse us,” I say. “We’re nearly done here.”
    “Not at all,” he says, with that startled look he always seems to have, as if you’ve just walked in on him in the privy. “I was looking for you, in fact. Would you mind helping me for a moment in the library?”
    “Both of us?” I ask, because he’s just looking at me.
    “No, just