Khassian paused on the doorstep of Mistress Permay’s house, listening intently.

‘D’ye hear that?’ Jolaine Tradescar cried. ‘Damme if we’re not already too late.’

‘Too late?’

‘Have you never before seen Sulien on the Day of the Dead?’

‘I am a visitor. I know nothing of your ways, your customs.’ Khassian was fast becoming irritated with Tradescar’s oblique comments.

‘They’ll have sealed off all the doors into the Undercity – all but the doors in the Temple. The only way in is through the Temple with all the crowds.’

‘Then let’s join them.’

‘My dear young man, have you any idea what you’re suggesting? It’s such a crush.’

‘A crush in which we can slip into the Undercity unnoticed.’

‘Hm.’ Jolaine Tradescar was fingering her collar as if it were too tight. ‘It’s worth a try.’

The Day of the Dead. To Khassian, the name evoked a sombre, macabre festival. Already he could imagine leaping figures wearing grotesque death masks, dangling skeletons, candles set inside human skulls. Perhaps the staid, provincial people of Sulien practised some bizarre ritual of death, such as he had read of in the far islands of Ta Ni Gohoa, carrying the wrapped mummified corpses of their venerated ancestors around the city to the sounds of music and firecrackers…

The reality could not have been more different. The shops and boutiques approaching the Temple forecourt were hung with rainbow banners and paper star-lilies. The most grisly souvenirs Khassian saw were the wriggling water-snakes made of blackcurrant jelly which a confectioner was selling to a crowd of clamouring children.

‘It’s too commercial nowadays,’ complained Jolaine Tradescar. ‘Too many stallholders making a profit out of it. Prefer to remember the dead my own way, not in some public jamboree.’

*

‘So – where is the patient?’ Ophil Tartarus handed his cloak and hat to Sister Crespine.

‘I’ve sedated her.’ Jerame led the way upstairs. ‘But she’s very weak – she’s taken no nourishment for two days now.’

‘Two days!’ Tartarus’s wild eyebrows lifted. ‘Why didn’t you call me sooner?’

Jerame gruanted an inaudible reply. He could not tell Tartarus the real reason; he had only called him now because nothing he had tried had worked. He was desperate.

In the darkened sickroom, Orial seemed no more than a pale shadow on the bed.

Tartarus checked her pulse at wrist and throat, raised her eyelids, one at a time. Orial murmured, twitching at his touch. Jerame clenched his fists, willing himself not to interfere. He must respect Tartarus’s professional judgement, he must remember that the man’s medical methods might be unorthodox – but they were Orial’s only hope.

‘How much longer can you keep her sedated? She’s fighting it,’ Tartarus said. ‘And how great a dose can her body tolerate? There’s little enough of her as it is.’ His fingers passed over the scars striping Orial’s pale cheeks. ‘Self-inflicted?’

Jerame nodded.