But Ilsevir had wanted more than kindness from his protégé. He had wanted his heart, his soul. Unable to create his own compositions, Ilsevir had sought to gain control of Khassian’s music. This phrase was too angular, that modulation too unexpected, too harsh…

Khassian shuddered, remembering disagreements, clashes, ugly scenes. Words that should never have been spoken; cruel, bitter words. Words that could not be unsaid. His head drooped slowly forward until his forehead rested on his updrawn knees.

Ilsevir would not help him now… not unless he capitulated to all Girim’s demands.

And he would not recant. He would never recant.

Khassian’s cell door was flung open and two Guerriors came in. One grabbed his wrists and twisted them behind his back, forcing him to his knees. Khassian struggled. Another seized his head between his hands, twisting it sideways.

Pincers bit into Khassian’s ear-lobe. He yelped aloud, outraged at the indignity. A metal tag was forced into his tender flesh and firmly clamped down with tongs. The metal tag, heavy and cold, grazed against his neck, pulling the torn lobe down. Blood spattered his grey tunic.

His pierced ear on fire, he stared at his oppressors, speechless.

‘Now, move.’

‘Wh-where are you taking me?’

‘You can’t leave the Sanctuary without a tag.’

In the yard outside, the daylight hurt his eyes. The Guerriors pushed him up a ramp into a wagon where they chained his wrists to the seat.

The wagon left the Sanctuary and trundled away across the heath.

Narrowing his eyes against the sunglare, he saw an extraordinary structure on the horizon, a monstrous unfinished building whose jagged walls were swarming with workers.

At first he had not recognised them. And then, as face after face had slowly turned towards him, he had seen the flicker of recognition in their eyes – and he had known them.

The unlucky ones. The ones who had not got away in time. His musicians. His singers, his orchestra. The cast of the ill-fated opera.

Clad only in filthy overalls, they laboured to move the huge blocks of stone. They were covered in stone-dust, their hair and faces powdered.

The air was thick with the choking dust; it dried Khassian’s throat, it settled on his lashes. He could see how their efforts to shift the stones had lacerated their hands; fingers which had once moved over strings and keys to produce sounds of delicacy and subtlety, were now bleeding, torn by the coarse stones.

They did not dare to acknowledge him. He saw how their eyes slid away, avoiding contact, how their shoulders drooped as they turned from him back to their work.

He wanted to cry out to them, ‘Don’t give up! Don’t let them break you!’ but the wagon moved on, taking the road into the city.