‘Of course I’ll do all I can. Do allow me a certain professional pride, Diva.’ Orial heard the stiffness in her father’s voice; Cramoisy’s words had stung him. ‘I have the most advanced techniques at my disposal here in the Sanatorium. But there will be no miracles. The Illustre has suffered a very serious injury. Even if we can save his hands, I doubt that he will ever be able to play a musical instrument again.’

CHAPTER 2

He called me Iridial.

Orial stood at the oval looking-glass in her bedroom, gazing at her reflection by the soft lamplight. Her hair was still pinned up, confined beneath her starched nurse’s cap. Slowly she drew out the pins and shook her hair free about her shoulders.

Do I really resemble her?

But her mother’s hair had been fair, bright with the yellow-gold of early celandines. Her own hair was the golden-brown of velvet gaillardia petals – yet in the lamplight it glinted… was that what had made Cramoisy cry out? Or was there some other likeness, more subtle, of which she was unaware? Was it the way she moved, the way she held her head?

Orial sighed as she stared at her reflection. She could not remember. Try as she might to recall her mother clearly, her memories had faded to a few, bitter-sweet sensations. They were of a closeness, a warmth, never since recaptured; a voice, sweet and low, lulling her to sleep.

The portrait of Iridial that hung in her father’s bedroom showed an ethereal young girl of delicate beauty, her hand resting against her cheek, gazing on some distant horizon. The colours of the portrait were muted, cloud colours glimpsed through a rainbow-haze of mist… Even her mother’s eyes seemed touched with the iridescence of the rainbow: palest blue, striated with pink, amber, violet.

Rainbow eyes.

Orial had always thought it some fancy of the painter’s. But now, as she unhooked the wire spectacles from her ears and peered more closely at her reflection, she saw for the first time that her own eyes were changing. The pale blue of the iris, paler than a dawn sky, was no longer the intense azure she had been born with. Were those streaks of rose radiating from the dark pupil in the centre? And gold? And darker violet?

‘Just a few minutes, Diva. He’s still very weak…’

‘My poor, brave Amaru.’

‘Cramoisy,’ Khassian murmured as the singer bent over to kiss him. ‘Are we… safe?’ He shifted a little in the bed, wincing as the pain in his hands flared dully again, distant fires glimpsed through rolling smoke.

‘Your hands. Do they hurt terribly? Dear, dear, you’re feverish…’

The Diva dabbed at Khassian’s forehead with a cologne-soaked handkerchief. The pungent scent nauseated Khassian.