A thousand questions came bubbling up into Orial’s mind. Here at last was someone who had known her mother. Someone who seemed not only prepared but eager to talk about her. Maybe Cramoisy could provide answers to some of the mysteries that shrouded Iridial’s death. Mysteries that haunted Orial. She knew she had never been told the whole truth. She had a right to know what had really happened. She was hungry for information – and yet apprehensive of what Cramoisy might reveal. Was the past better left undisturbed?

She leaned forward and lifted the teapot.

‘More tea?’

A turbulence of notes swirled about Khassian’s brain with the violence of an autumn storm. Music so wild, so visceral it shook him to the roots of his soul Soon the page was spattered with a myriad black dots as he feverishly dipped his pen in the ink again and again

But as he scribbled on, desperate to capture the notes before they whirled away into the darkness, the black dots began to move on the page. He rubbed his eyes. Tiredness must be playing tricks with his sight. But no. The notes were milling around, a horde of tiny insects, crawling off the page on to his hands.

He tried to shake them off but still they came until his hands were covered in a coating of milling black insects. And the more violently he shook his hands, the tighter they seemed to cling.

He could feel the tug of tiny serrated mandibles, nibbling into his fingers, his palms, stripping away the flesh –

He was being devoured, eaten alive by his own creation.

In desperation he began to scrape his hands against the edge of the desk but only gobbets of raw flesh came away. He could see the white, bloodied bone beneath –

His mouth opened in a scream, a rasping scream of denial.

‘Noooo!’

‘Try to lie still, Illustre.’

Blinking in the lamplight, Khassian saw faces above him, faces he did not recognise. A man of middle years, his brown hair peppered with grey, was gazing thoughtfully down at him through gold-rimmed spectacles; a woman in a starched cap stood beside him.

‘Who – are you?’

‘My name is Jerame Magelonne.’ The man’s voice was quiet yet authoritative. ‘You are in my Sanatorium in Sulien.’

The nurse was unwrapping Khassian’s bandages, peeling away layer after stained layer. Beneath lay something claw-like, a raw, red mess of tissue oozing yellow liquid. A few charred flakes of skin still adhered to parts of the claw, others had stuck to the bandages and come away as the slow unravelling had gone on.

‘Tsk, tsk!’ Dr Magelonne clicked his tongue against his teeth in disapproval. ‘Pus.’

‘What – are you – doing?’ Khassian said in a gasp.

‘Lie back, Illustre.’

‘What’s happened to my hands? They shouldn’t look like that.’

‘Please lie back, Illustre.’