‘I have always practised my music in the Undercity. I don’t think it is disrespectful,’ said Orial.

‘I will make contact with the other musicians. Let us agree to meet in the Parade Gardens tomorrow – say around three in the afternoon? That way, anyone who observes us will think we have come to listen to the band.’

Amaru Khassian left Mistress Permay’s house in a rainstorm. Acir Korentan watched him check the Crescent to see if anyone was watching and then, head down, plunge out into the pouring rain.

Acir followed – at a distance.

The composer seemed to know where he was going. He dodged through the umbrellas in broad Millisom’s Street and crossed the rainglossed cobbles at a run. Acir just caught sight of him slipping into a qaffë shop. With a sigh, he positioned himself under the striped awning of a milliner’s and prepared to wait.

By midday the louring rainclouds had lifted from the city, revealing a sun-sheened sky of delicate blue. By the afternoon, it seemed to Acir that all Sulien had come out to take the warm spring air, to see and be seen…

Numbed with boredom, he almost missed Khassian as the composer came out of the qaffë shop in the company of three men.

Three strangers, all unfamiliar to Acir.

He slipped out into the jostling crowd and followed them.

North Parade was thronged with people, all taking their afternoon promenade. Posy-sellers thrust little bunches of violets and anemones under his nose; confectioners offered him dishes of junket sprinkled with nutmeg or brown-bread ices. In the Parade Gardens below the band had begun to play country dances: quaint old-fashioned quadrilles and rigadoons.

Silken ribbons streamed from spring bonnets and straw hats, fluttering like pastel pennants in a skirmish of fashion. Even the men had entered into the spring spirit and sported brightly embroidered waistcoats; lace, white as cow parsley, frothed at necks and wrists.

Acir passed like a sombre shadow between the cheerful promenaders, keeping his quarry in sight. In the Undercity he had experienced the visceral power of an ancient religion. Could these muslin-gowned women, these periwigged men, be the same people he had witnessed at the subterranean funeral?

Khassian and his companions had reached the bridge across the Avenne; they turned abruptly aside and took the steps down to the gardens. Acir stopped in the shadow of the bridge’s arch. No longer raging and swollen with snowmelt, the Avenne lapped placidly at the bridge’s foot.

Acir watched Khassian talking with his companions in the shade of a snow-blossomed cherry tree. Who were these three shabbily dressed strangers with whom he seemed so intimate?

A woman came strolling towards Acir, idly twirling a lacy parasol on her shoulder.

The sun dazzled in her tumbled marigold curls; yellow and gold, echoed in the faint dusting of freckles on her nose that even the most clever maquillage failed to disguise. Golden pollen.