[There is a method of communication Ortus has learned of since he came here, in his readings about those who take to the sea. It is called a message in a bottle, a missive enclosed in stoppered glass and tossed into the waves, so their currents may carry it where they will. It is an act of desperate hope, a reaching out across space and time with no certainty that the message will ever be received, or when, or into whose hands it may fall.

He had drawn parallels with the haunted fragments his Lady had received in her Canaan House. He had never imagined he would become a bottle himself, the vessel of dead woman's final farewell. He looks at the young man who has received those impossible words, and Ortus thinks that he has rarely known such a privilege of service.]

She was vital and unburdened in death. Fiercely kind, and extraordinarily brave. She knew those were but your echoes, though it grieved her still to be so parted from you both. [His sorrow alters, transmuted to gentleness in his eulogizing.] We did not know what had befallen those not with us.

But we were well, so much as ghosts may be. Lady Pent, Seneschal Quinn, Duchess Septimus, Sir Ebdoma, Lieutenant Dyas, and myself. The Fourth, Lady Pent sent on to the River, to spare them the danger we faced. The Master Templar Octakiseron passed from that place of his own will.

I am eased to know that fate was not a true one, for you or your cavalier. She never believed that it could have been so. She spoke highly of you.

[He pauses, adjusting himself to sit straighter, near-black eyes slanted away for a passing moment of courtesy. There is more to this tale, and he is honorbound to tell it, so he does, in plain, measured calm.]

What you witnessed was a construct. One Lady Harrowhark sunk into the River, anchored to her own mind, and gathered the dead of Canaan House to in order to assist her in a great effort. We faced a haunting there, from a terrible enemy, and the Duchess Septimus was with us when that enemy fell. We all returned to the River, and whatever may lie beyond it, if Lady Pent was right - and I would not doubt her word.

[The intellectual interest Palamedes shows in relation to the bubble combined with that particular necromantic briskness to assert his own competency in the work wrests an small, surprised smile from Ortus, if only for a moment. He clears his throat like one shaking bone dust from their robes, his hand coming up to politely cover it, and he finds that the expression lingers wonder than he expects, softening in the relief of knowing that Camilla Hect survived.

He has known too many brave young dead. Even if this one is a stranger to him, it does not change his sentiment.]

It does ease my mind. [But he notes the omission of the Warden, the specificity of completely; perhaps Palamedes will observe Ortus' observation in turn.] As it eases it to know that I have been able to assist in your understanding, Warden. The others spoke at length about the unusual nature of our circumstances, in terms of the necromantic theorems at work. Perhaps you may discuss them with my Lady.

[Translated from the circumnavigating reticence of the Ninth, what Ortus means might best be expressed as: it would be good for Harrow and Palamedes to talk about what happened, necromancer to necromancer, and perhaps friend to friend. That, perhaps further than that, he is set at greater ease to know that there is one less terrible, grief-wracked secret in the world that lies between people like the uneasy dead themselves.

This articulated, he extends his hand back towards Palamedes, soft fingers half-curled inward with only traces of his usual timidness.]

And I would say, in answer to your question, that I have no doubt of the prowess of a Sixth House Warden in their discipline.