Warden Sethri Vouls

The eldest of the Lower Wardens, keeper of the keys nobody names — he has stopped re-mortaring one lower door because the dead behind it now prays back, and he wants a not-house-born outsider to decide what that means.

Sethri has been a Lower Warden for thirty-one years. He knows every door, every drip, every name scratched into the lower niches by the house's dead. What he does not know is what to do about the door at the bottom of the east undercroft that began, three months ago, answering his morning prayer — not with any sound at all, but with the latch turning a half-inch on its own, every morning, at the exact moment he finishes the last word. It is not ringing. It is replying. He has told no one in the house. He cannot unsee the shape of what it means. He will ask a stranger before he will ask Lord Vandahl.