Notes formed themselves into a melody, a repetitive, insistent, obsessive melody. It flowed through her consciousness like a current of dark water. Where had she heard it before? The Parade band? She glanced over her shoulder to where the musicians were packing away their instruments beneath the striped awning.

She softly sang a few notes aloud.

No. It was not one of the simple country jigs or gavottes favoured by the band; its intervals were too wayward, its mode too melancholy. Neither was it a part of Khassian’s opera; it bore none of the characteristics of his style. Whenever she closed her eyes, waters lapped into her mind, cloud-dark waters, stirring with a breath of current…

The melody and the waters seemed inextricably linked, one with the other.

She wandered on alongside the Avenne, holding the iron rail, the feel of the cold metal against her finger-tips centring her, keeping the weaving spell of the melody at bay.

She lifted her hands from the railing and closed her eyes, waiting.

The music flooded back into her brain, a rushing current, eddying, swirling into a vortex. A whirlpool.

Orial gasped. The notes spun faster, faster, dragging her towards the black chasm at the centre of the spinning vortex. Whirled giddily around, she felt her knees buckling, she was falling, falling –

She opened her eyes. She was leaning out over the railing, dangerously far over the placid riverwaters below.

‘What is happening to me?’ she whispered.

A cheerful whistling cut across the insistent river-music, a drinking catch, robust and simple. The drinking catch argued with the river-music in Orial’s mind. She tried to concentrate on the catch, on its bright major intervals, thirds, clean, clear fifths, sixths…

‘Are you all right, demselle?’ The park-keeper was coming along the path towards her; the last sunlight burnished the brass buttons on his uniform.

‘A – little – dizzy –’ Orial whispered. Keep whistling. Please keep whistling.

‘You could have fallen in the river!’ He caught hold of her, prising her fingers from the railings.

Normally she would have shrunk from such intimate contact with a stranger. But now she sank thankfully against his broad shoulder, utterly spent. He smelt strongly of pipe tobacco, his breath warm, tainted with the stale smoke. A real smell. A comforting smell.

‘Shall I call you a barouche, demselle? Have you far to go?’

‘Dr Magelonne’s Sanatorium,’ she said faintly.

‘Let’s sit you on this bench to recover.’

Shadows were lengthening, birds were fluttering in the ornamental cherry branches overhead, settling to roost. Underfoot the dewy grass was white with cherry and crab apple blossom. She stared at the fallen blossom. Spring was passing. It would soon be the Day of the Dead.

‘Dr Magelonne?’

Jerame looked up from his notes.

A woman stood on the threshold.

He got up, frowning slightly. It was not yet time for his first patient of the morning.

‘You have me at a disadvantage.’